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The current US-China competition draws comparisons to the Cold War contest between the United States and the Soviet Union. But there are three crucial differences between the great-power contests of today and during the Cold War: China is now more economically powerful than the Soviet Union was; the American and Chinese economies are more intertwined now than the United States' and Soviet Union's ever were; and US allies today are wealthier and more militarily capable than during the Cold War. Because of these differences, the United States should approach its rivalry with China in a way that emphasizes economics and focuses less on the types of ideological and military contests that characterized the Cold War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the nearly 75 years that the People's Republic of China has been in existence, the field of contemporary China studies in the United States has developed and evolved through six distinguishable 'generations' of scholarship. The evolving social science scholarly analyses of contemporary China have paralleled the changes in the PRC itself over time, but they have also reflected paradigmatic changes in scholarly disciplines in the United States. Other stimuli which have also impacted the field include domestic politics in America and shifts in US-China relations. This article traces the evolution of field (as observed and interpreted by the author); it concludes that while the field is generally very healthy, diverse, and enjoys great breadth and depth of knowledge, it faces significant new challenges for source material and research in Xi Jinping's China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

United States support for Ukraine and preparation for a potential, likely protracted, conflict with China has drawn attention to the fragility of the U.S. defense industrial base. Since the end of the Cold War, the American defense industry has optimized for peacetime and low-attrition conflicts, prized efficiency and cost-savings over capacity and flexibility, and incentivized short-run returns over resilience and innovation. While this design may have made sense in a period of undisputed U.S. dominance, the rise of the People's Republic of China as a peer competitor and the emerging demand that the U.S. deter and, if necessary, win one or more protracted conflicts requires that Washington take a more intentional and direct role in shaping the capability, capacity, and resilience of the U.S. defense industrial base. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The People's Republic of China's (PRC) policy toward the Korean Peninsula can be largely characterized as the maintenance of a "stable status quo." This has been a constant feature since the founding of the PRC in 1949. Even when China was extremely radicalized and encouraged revolutions in the Third World in the 1960s, it prevented North Korea from attacking South Korea. However, the reasons behind China's policy choices have varied over time. This paper attempts to highlight the different reasons that led the PRC to maintain the same policy toward the Korean Peninsula during the Cold War. This article takes a historiographical perspective, juxtaposing the Sino-North Korean, Sino-Soviet, and Sino-US relationships, to reveal useful clues for understanding China's policy toward the Korean Peninsula and to elucidate the international political context China's policy exists within. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The cover of this issue of Technology and Culture illustrates how China implemented—and promoted—on-the-job training in Africa. The image shows a Tanzanian dentist practicing dentistry under the supervision of a Chinese doctor in rural Tanzania, probably in the 1970s. Despite the ineffectiveness of the on-the-job training model, the photograph attempts to project the success of the dental surgery techniques exchanged between China and Tanzania, using simple medical equipment rather than sophisticated medical knowledge. The rural setting reflects the ideological struggle of the Cold War era, when Chinese doctors and rural mobile clinics sought to save lives in the countryside, while doctors from other countries engaged in Cold War competition worked primarily in cities. This essay argues that images were essential propaganda tools during the Cold War and urges historians of technology to use images critically by considering the contexts that influenced their creation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The crisis today in Ukraine between Russia and the West has uncanny parallels to an often-overlooked Cold War conflict between China, the Soviet Union, and the United States known as "The Taiwan Straits Crisis of 1958" or "The Second Taiwan Straits Crisis" – which some analysts have referred to as the first serious nuclear crisis. In addition to worries about nuclear escalation, there are other similarities: Russia and China viewed themselves, then and now, as exceptional nations, superior to a decadent, materialist America thought to be in decline – but still carrying dangerous military clout. Faced with a strong West, the leaders of China and Russia in the 1950s tried to present a united, Sino-Russian public front, even if their two countries were fundamentally split over the issues that led to the Taiwan Straits Crisis. If the past is any guide, then despite economic pressure from the United States and the loss of international reputation, China is unlikely to ever join the US-led sanctions against Russia. As the conflict deepens, both dictators' assessments of the strength and intentions of the United States might begin to diverge, opening a way for their rivals to drive a wedge between them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When and how do the American political elites react discursively to China as a rising power? Do they depict it as an economic or military risk? What role do discursive references to China play in the US populist discourses? Relying on the thematic and critical discourse analysis of all the American presidential debates, this article explores the way US politicians portray China throughout three eras marked by distinct global power configurations. Several types of discourses have been identified. In contrast to the belligerent rhetoric of the early Cold War, when China was framed as a major military threat, after 2004, presidential candidates started referring to Beijing as an economic rival. By 2008, the emerging bipartisan consensus centered on China as mainly a trade competitor. By contrast, populist narratives in 2016 and 2020 stood out because they included emotional appeals and inflated the risks of the Sino-American rivalry to mobilize voters. In doing so, the populists sought to forge coalitions in favor of protectionist policies among those voters, who were employed in manufacturing sectors facing growing international competition. The anti-China mentions reached a peak during the 2020 debates amidst the pandemic when the populist candidate used biased language, relying on tropes resembling the 19th century racist "yellow peril" rhetoric. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past three decades, terrorism has directly threatened China's national security and has played a key role in its foreign policy. The nature of terrorism in China is changing, as is the Chinese government's response to the threat. Despite the issue's importance, there is still little knowledge about the changing face of terrorism in China. Thus, this study fills the gap in the literature on this subject by reviewing the terrorism threat against China after the Cold War from 1989 through 2020, based on the global terrorism database. The study's main findings reveal that China is not a significant target of terrorism when compared to other powers. Terrorism in China is domestic and concentrated in four specific districts, chiefly caused by the Uyghurs Uprising. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the BRI did not cause a dramatic increase in terrorist attacks against Chinese citizens outside China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mid-1950s saw the relationship between China and Indonesia evolve from one of mutual hostility to one of fraternity as a trend of détente emerged out of the Geneva (1954) and the Bandung (1955) conferences. This article explores why and how the two newly independent nations applied art diplomacy to reduce their ideological differences and facilitate their commercial and political rapprochements for the sake of Asian solidarity. Through contextualizing a series of art activities between the two nations, especially China's reproduction of President Sukarno's private collection of paintings and Chairman Mao Zedong's gifts of Chinese ink paintings to President Sukarno, this article argues that interactions in the name of art exemplify how China shaped its modern profile as an independent and industrialized power. It will also show how China deviated from its diplomacy of 'Leaning to One Side', formulated in the late 1940s, towards the 'Peaceful United Front' of the mid-1950s. More broadly, art relations between China and Indonesia reflect intensive cultural exchanges between the newly independent, yet ideologically clashing, nations of the Third World in the postwar period and offer a multifaceted history of the Cold War beyond the binary paradigm of the two superpowers of the United States and the Soviet Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the first half of the 1960s China witnessed an unprecedented florescence of theatrical works on Third World decolonization, which aimed to disseminate the ideology of Maoist internationalism and cultivate transnational and interracial solidarity among the Chinese public. Existing scholarship on Maoist internationalist theatre tends to understand the phenomenon as the domestication of Third World decolonization for China's political ends. This article, by focusing on the heterogeneous processes of production, adaptation, and reception, illuminates the practical and epistemological challenges of representing an internationalist subject, the imperfect performance of foreign culture and history, and the porous process of meaning-making for Chinese performers and audiences. Using previously untapped historical materials, such as performance programmes, personal recollections, and newspapers, this article explores the staging of the Congo Crisis (1960–1965)—a widely mediated international event in Maoist China and a central conflict in the global Cold War—in the spoken drama War Drums on the Equator (1965), its many local variations, and a dance drama adaptation, The Raging Congo River (1965). By mediating and enacting 'embodied and affective knowledge' about Congo, these theatrical works made the political motif of internationalist solidarity into sonorous and kinaesthetic artefacts that engendered plural meanings to Chinese performers and audiences. This article further reveals flawed perceptions, processes of corrections, and the epistemological limitations in the performance of the Congo Crisis in Maoist China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In November 2019, Henry Kissinger warned that the United States and China were in "the foothills of a Cold War" that could end in a conflict worse than World War I. Two years, one pandemic, a change of American administrations, and a brutal war in Ukraine later, the relationship is above of the foothills and nearing the summit. Cold War framing now seems inevitable. It has, at least, the virtue of focusing the world's attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article surveys recent legislative and policy changes on foreign investments in four Nordic countries (Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway). Until recently, only Finland had national legislation on foreign investments, although historically the Nordic countries were forerunners in introducing foreign investment controls. A general rethink in the USA and the European Union on the links between liberal economies, investment policies and security has occurred in recent years. This has cast investments by enterprises from major authoritarian countries, foremost China, in a different light. Rather than investment numbers as such, or realised risks related to Chinese investments, a 'causal narrative' has emerged in the Nordic countries that draws attention to the nature of the Chinese party-state and its' unclear relationship to Chinese companies, underlining potential strategic motivations and security risks behind Chinese investments. Rapidly changing risk perceptions have driven legislative and policy changes on foreign direct investment (FDI), e.g. investment screening. Chinese investments have thus become riskified, to use a term coined by Olaf Corry. Shifting risk perceptions have similarly preceded previous 'formative epochs' in Nordic FDI legislation in the early twentieth century, after the Second World War and at the end of the Cold War. Each formative epoch has been characterised by a distinctive 'risk profile'. We postulate that these shifting risk perceptions significantly shape the reception of FDI as a key channel of cross-border connectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What does the decision to designate China as a "long-term strategic competitor" imply for U.S. defence strategy? To address this question, we draw on net assessment and competitive strategies, two complementary frameworks developed in the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) during the Cold War to understand and manage long-term competition with the Soviet Union, respectively. Net assessment and competitive strategies are tailored around specific competitors and follow a characteristically dialectical approach to strategic planning, based on complex, recursive calculations of move and countermove. We argue that the identification of China as a long-term strategic competitor has paved the way for an increasingly systematic application of net assessment and competitive strategies within DoD, even if obstacles to such application still remain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzed the presentations of the deployment of THAAD (Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense) on South Korean territory by conducting a qualitative framing analysis of editorials and columns in The China Daily. This media organ of the Chinese government largely condemned the United States and South Korea as falling captive to the mindset of the Cold War. This antagonistic coverage was surely influenced by the Chinese government, which views the THAAD deployment can damage China's national security interests. The China Daily viewed the United States as a competitor and adversary to China. According to this newspaper, the United States is eager to wage a new Cold War and refuses to consider China as a potential partner in finding a solution to the North Korean crisis. In the opinion pages of The China Daily, Samuel Huntington's "clash of civilization" paradigm is repeatedly invoked as the proper framework through which a globalized world should be viewed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the understudied mission of Bishop Carlo van Melckebeke CICM as Apostolic Visitor for the Chinese overseas from 1953 to his retirement in 1970. Although Chinese had settled overseas from as far back as the twelfth century, the Catholic Church never had a significant presence among these communities, except in British colonial era Singapore-Malaya. Following the mid-twentieth century forced exodus of Chinese seminarians and Western missionaries from the mainland after the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the Holy See responded by redirecting missionary efforts through the initiatives of Bishop van Melckebeke and his colleagues to this major ethnic group scattered across the world. This article deals with this unprecedented apostolate to these diasporic communities, in a substantially different manner from previous scholarship on Catholicism in China in terms of notions of institution, and the framing of missionary activities, networks, and resources. Based on archival resources, media reports and interviews, it recounts how the Office of Apostolic Visitor and the Singapore Catholic Central Bureau extended their mission beyond the politics of the Cold War, and organised a variety of ministries to serve the overseas Chinese population residing on five continents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses perceptions of NATO in Chinese and Russian press narratives. China and Russia are often mentioned together as they share a common (geo)political position towards a perceived hegemonic West. We analysed frames constructing NATO, a key Western military alliance, at the time of the Warsaw summit in 2016 as well as the origins of the frames, stemming from the sources quoted. Both countries frame NATO foremost as an aggressive organisation stuck in Cold War confrontational worldviews while Russia and China are open to dialogue and cooperation. The main narrative that emerges, therefore, centres on the self-proclaimed moral superiority of Russia and China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Their success in this regard underscores the benefits of mining local archives in the PRC to study China's Cold War experiences. Despite problems with archival access and numerous other obstacles, the field of Cold War studies in the People's Republic of China (PRC) has expanded greatly in recent years. In August 2011, ECNU and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars inaugurated the ECNU-Wilson Center Cold War Studies Initiative (housed at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC), which subsequently has offered Chinese Cold War scholars and doctoral students new opportunities to conduct research in the United States. [Extracted from the article]

This survey explains how the field of Cold War studies has been able to survive and even flourish in the People's Republic of China (PRC) from 2000 to the present, despite all the practical and political obstacles. It reviews several areas that Chinese scholars have been exploring: the economic Cold War; foreign intelligence operations and psychological warfare; nuclear strategies; the sciences during the Cold War and overseas education projects; and China's policies toward neighboring countries during the Cold War. The article outlines the major practical challenges facing Chinese scholars and the potential for overcoming these challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From 1953 to 1991, speaker installations on the coasts of the People's Republic of China (PRC) and Taiwan sent audio signals back and forth between the two Cold War foes. This opposed amplification and diffusion of sound continued for nearly four decades, employed thousands of "callers," technicians, station managers, scriptwriters, and other staff, and was heard by successive generations of troops and civilians on both sides. Previous research on the use of sound for mobilization and subjectification in China during this era has focused on the authoritarian, revolutionary, or even totalitarian nature of sonic statecraft. This article, drawing on state archives, memoirs, and interviews, compares the goals, infrastructure, and voices of the two sides to suggest a broader and more transnational framework for understanding acts of sonic propaganda and control, representative not of "communist" or "free" China, but as a diffusion of the state voice into acts of listening between states. It also explores how the opposed initiatives of both sides interacted and influenced each other over years of call and response. Finally, it examines the civilian response to the broadcasts, revealing plural modes of listening, and of apprehending both oneself and one's enemy. I offer the metaphor of "diffusion" not only to describe the process by which states and individuals positioned themselves through the transmission and reception of sonic impulses, but as a way to do social history that focuses on the multiple receptions and reverberations of an event. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Indo-Pacific region has become a central focus of great power competition. Not surprisingly, a rising China seeks to play an important, if not a leading role in the transformation of Asia's present regional order. The United States, meanwhile, as the unipole, has strong incentives to prevent the rise of a peer competitor. Facing certain structural and domestic constraints, China is disinclined to resort to the strategy of violent revision or subversion historically pursued by previous rising powers. Instead, China has pursued a gradual change of the existing regional order through a combination of internal balancing and external reassurance strategies. Specifically, China's quest for great power status in the region, particularly in response to the Indo-Pacific strategy adopted by the United States since the Trump administration, has prompted its proactive shift to counterbalance the US' vision of order in the region. This paper argues that the balance of power and the balance of alignment constitute two key variables that affect the prospect of Sino-US competition for a preferable regional order. Beijing's balancing strategies have significantly enhanced its economic and military capabilities, reducing the gap with the United States on the one hand and attracted certain regional states to join China-led regional initiatives on the other. However, owing to the complex balancing dynamics in the region and the agency of small and middle powers, the balance of alignment supports neither American nor Chinese dominance of Asia. Contrary to the 'new Cold War' narrative, the contest for order does not entail dividing the region into two rival blocs, but rather creating certain overlapping groupings and coalitions led by the two great powers. It consequently also signifies that the current order transition under a new bipolarity will be prolonged and relatively stable compared to the Cold War bipolarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores narratives on the People's Republic of China created by intellectuals of the New Left in Uruguay during the 1950s and 1960s. The Chinese Revolution inspired new interest and began a period of exchange of ideas, publications, and people between Latin America and China, especially among leftists. However, historiography mostly focused on the impacts of the Cuban Revolution in the formation of the New Left in Latin America and has so far downplayed the role of Asian and African experiences in this process. The article includes China in the Uruguayan debates and argues that the crisis faced by the country during the period allowed leftists to perceive it as a possible inspiration for the transformation they sought. Furthermore, the crisis in international communism caused by the Sino-Soviet split opened the possibility of China being perceived as an experience distinct from the Soviet Union. This left had an ambiguous relationship with China marked by international and internal factors, and the operation to approximate the two countries was complex. It was viable because leftists interpreted the Chinese Revolution according to categories that were disseminated, such as antiimperialism, development and Third Position/Third World. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has set the direction for inter-state relations through the establishment of the rules-based order. This very order can be generally believed to draw from the institutions, conventions, and norms centred on the United Nations. However, the brewing power competition between the US and China banks on either preserving or revising this order. Interestingly, the US, its allies, and its strategic partners regard themselves as the protectors of these rules, while China is often seen as a revisionist bent on altering the status-quo. However, there have been issues even among certain major democracies regarding their own adherence and interpretation of these very rules. This paper seeks to highlight the vulnerabilities of the rules-based order, which considerably compromise its legitimacy and enforcement by major democracies. Two isolated but pressing cases have been presented to demonstrate how three particular democracies: India, the US, and the United Kingdom seem to have varied interpretations of certain aspects of the rules-based order. This inconsistency will have significant implications on their roles as responsible stakeholders of the established order, which, in turn, may provide revisionist states an opportunity for exploitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The deterioration of bilateral relations between the US and China heralds a new chapter in geopolitics increasingly characterised by competition and confrontation. We introduce insights from contemporary Cold War historiography, which we suggest can help deepen our understanding of the present. Historians have largely rejected the notion that the Cold War was a bipolar struggle between great powers. Instead, the 'Global Cold War' is increasingly interpreted as an era, order or context whose diverse localised manifestations necessitate multilingual research around the world. This scholarship draws attention to the conflict's 'pericentric' nature, its diverse regional manifestations and the transnational connections it enabled. We demonstrate that these concepts can inform research on contemporary China–US rivalry and suggest a multi‐scalar and multi‐sited research agenda in line with approaches of feminist political geography and critical geopolitics. The deterioration of bilateral relations between the US and China heralds a new chapter in geopolitics increasingly characterised by competition and confrontation. We demonstrate that insights from Cold War historiography can inform research on contemporary China‐US rivalry, and we suggest a multi‐scalar and multi‐sited research agenda in line with approaches of feminist political geography and critical geopolitics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considering the relations between Japan and mainland China from 1952 to 1972, it is possible to say that there were "twenty lost years" in East Asian regional politics, because of no official diplomatic relations between Japan and China, which have been the two biggest powers of East Asia. The research question of this study is how the relations between the two countries developed in this process, when the political power in Japan did not prefer recognizing the communist regime in mainland China instead of its nationalist counterpart in Taiwan due to the Cold War political conjuncture. Accordingly, in this study, the period between 1952-1972 was examined in terms of economic diplomacy. Economics was perhaps the only factor that kept the people of the two countries dependent on each other. Informal and individual initiatives and businesses established during this period, which were sometimes openly supported by politicians behind closed doors, ensured that the threads were never broken in Sino-Japanese relations. In this context, the names, Takasaki Tatsunosuke in Japan and Liao Chengzhi in China, stood out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Northeast Asia is usually associated with conflict and war. Challenging this prevailing view, this article shows that the sub-region has achieved minimal peace since its peaceful transition from the Cold War to the post-Cold War period. The questions posed are: (a) what factors are responsible for Northeast Asia's minimal peace?; and (b) how will these factors respond to the worsening US-China competition since 2010? This article's argument is two-fold. First, Northeast Asia's minimal peace is explained by three realist-liberal factors: America's hegemony; strong economic interdependence among the Northeast Asian states; and a stable institutional structure in East Asia, including Northeast Asia. These factors kept a stable balance of power, ensured development and prosperity, and mitigated the political and strategic tensions between the states. Second, Northeast Asia's minimal peace would be durable to counter the negative effects of the Sino-US competition in the coming decades. While the economic interdependence and institutional building factors have shown resilience, the US hegemony faces a robust challenge from China. Nevertheless, the US hegemony is durable because of America's enduring relative strategic and economic advantages over China, the expanded role of America's regional allies to preserve US preponderance and China's problems in building an alternative regional order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The argument that "the end of the Cold War will bring history to an end with the final triumph of a free economy and democracy" was incorrect. As the US-China confrontation developed, economic security was discussed in Japan. In May 2022, the Economic Security Promotion Act was passed. The essential challenge of economic security is to "strike a balance between economic logic and political logic from the perspective of maximizing national interests." However, it is not easy to strike a balance between the logic of the economy, which seeks economic efficiency based on market principles, and the logic of politics, which seeks values different from economic efficiency, such as democracy. How Japan, which has its own relationship with the United States and China, respectively, will be able to achieve this balance between the two countries is a historical challenge. Japan must make endless efforts to fulfill its role in bringing stability to the international system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews Japan-China private trade from the 1950s to the normalization of diplomatic relations between Japan and China in 1972. Under the Cold War in East Asia, private actors were responsible for trade and business exchanges on behalf of the government in Japan-China relations. Both Japan and China promoted private trade with different political agendas. Japan's objective was to expand Japan-China exchanges with the concept of separation of politics and economics, while China used private trade as a strategic tool to attract Japanese public opinion toward China. This article will clarify how the intentions of the two countries affected private trade, and how private trade expanded as various trade groups competed with each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In both the first and second Indochina wars, Vietnam had a wide range of support from socialist countries, especially from its neighbour China, which was called the 'elder brother'. From the 1950s, China assisted Vietnam in its resistance against the United States and its allies. By comparing changes in Chinese grants and loans to key moments in the anti-American war in Vietnam, this article argues that Beijing's assistance was tied to US actions in South East Asia. The view from Vietnamese archival materials shows shifts in Chinese support that coincide with Beijing's strategic calculation in dealing with the US in the global conflict. Although both Vietnam and China were in the socialist camp and had a shared ideology, there were profound contradictions in Chinese assistance to Hanoi. The article reveals that while supporting Vietnam, China pursued its own benefits, leading to Vietnam's suspicion about China's real intentions in Indochina. This perspective can explain why the war between China and Vietnam happened in 1979, soon after the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thailand, which formed an alliance relationship with the US during the Cold War, has experienced a significant change in its foreign policy behavior towards China since the end of the Cold War. Thailand, which began to pursue the strategy of bandwagoning to the US, has drastically adopted a more pro-active foreign policy in the US-China competition. Under the leadership of military regimes, Thailand has adopted the hedging strategy in order to maintain domestic stability, to promote inclusive economic growth, to maneuver through the changing geopolitical environment around its peripheries, and to gain more support for its economic and military interests from the US and China. This article clearly reveals how it is possible for Thailand, which is a small state, to play an increasingly active role in its region. For this purpose, it examines the hedging option employed by small states and how Thailand pursues the hedging strategy as opposed to the strategies of more traditional balancing and bandwagoning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The US government has been promoting a new cold war against China for some time. It began before former President Donald Trump initiated a trade war against China and has continued under President Biden. The underlying reason for this policy is the drive of the US government to maintain a position of global domination and to prevent any other country from rising to a position of equal, or near equal, economic, political, or military strength with the US. This cold war is unjustified and poses serious dangers for people around the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the formative years (1949–1966) of the People's Republic of China (PRC), the outward translation of Chinese literature was a crucial element of an ambitious project of cultural diplomacy. Chinese leaders sought to redefine the PRC by projecting a positive self-image of the newly born state to generate interest, sympathy and support abroad during the Cold War. Despite its political and cultural importance, this project in translational practice has received little scholarly attention. Drawing on archival documents, this article focuses on the rationale, intentions and mechanisms behind the Chinese government's outward translation project as a form of cultural diplomacy in the first 17 years of the PRC. It thereby provides preliminary observations on the reception and effects of the PRC's export enterprise, specifically in the English-speaking world, which created new fault-lines as much as it built bridges during the Cold War. It also foreshadows the inherent tensions and challenges for the present China's more ambitious cultural diplomacy project via 'sending out' Chinese literature and culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China has made great strides in its diplomacy in Central Asia over the past 30 years since the establishment of diplomatic relations with the regional countries, with three major results including the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Silk Road Economic Belt, and the “China+Central Asia” (C+C5) cooperation mechanism. These results have not only fundamentally improved China’s security environment in the west, but also advanced stability and development in Central Asia in building a new type of international relations and a human community with a shared future. China has accumulated rich experience in its Central Asia diplomacy, which includes treating each other as equals and advocating trust and harmony; keeping pace with the times while consolidating the basis; pursuing mutual benefits with specific targets; and abandoning the Cold War mentality in handling the relations between major powers. China’s diplomacy with Central Asian countries has a long way to go, but holds bright prospects with much to be expected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This year marks the 50th anniversary of former US President Richard Nixon’s historic visit to China and the issuance of Shanghai Communiqué. Over the past half a century, the China-US relationship has kept moving forward despite twists and turns, contributing to peace, stability and prosperity in the world. Today’s world is of intertwined interests and a shared future. China and the United States have common interests and shared responsibilities. Cooperation is the only right choice. However, the US has got involved in issues related to China’s core interests, promoted “integrated deterrence” against China, accelerated the decoupling by building “a small yard with high fences,” and interfered with people-to-people exchanges in science and education. These moves are not helping the bilateral relations back on track. The United States must abandon the Cold War mentality, and choose dialogue over confrontation, cooperation over conflict, openness over seclusion, and integration over decoupling. Both sides should follow the principle of mutual respect as the premise to development of bilateral relations, stick to peaceful coexistence as the bottom line, and focus on win-win cooperation as the key, to overcome difficulties, rebuild trust, and bring more stability and certainty to a turbulent and fluid world in building a human community with a shared future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's foreign-policy agenda in the Cold War defined what countries would be included in "international" collaboration. There is little or no formal inter-state cooperation in this mode of science diplomacy: it went no further than consular offices on both sides authorizing cross-border travel between Communist China and scientific visitors from foreign countries. [Extracted from the article]

The recent two-decade-long march of "global China" – manifested as outward flows of investment, loans, infrastructure, migrants, media, cultural programmes and international and civil society engagement – has left sweeping but variegated footprints in many parts of the world. From "going out," officially announced in the year 2000, to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and Made in China 2025, and from the developing world to advanced industrialized democracies, state-endorsed campaigns are but tips of a much more momentous iceberg. Numerous Chinese citizens and private corporations have also participated in a global search for employment, business, investment and educational and emigration opportunities. International reactions to the increasingly ubiquitous presence of China and the Chinese people in almost every corner of the world have evolved from a mixture of anxiety and hope to a more explicitly critical backlash. Terms such as "sharp power," "debt-trap diplomacy" and the "new Cold War" bespeak the West's dominant perception today of China as a threat to be contained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Western discourse towards China had been hardening since it became clear to US leaders that their assumption that increasing trade and engagement with China would lead it to become a pale imitation of Western neoliberal financialised capitalisms was coming unravelled and China continued to adhere to its socialist commitments. In waging the US's New Cold War on China with equal if not greater vigour than Trump, Biden merely replaced Trump's "America First" stance with the traditionally hypocritical stance of imperialism that always pretends to do good for the world it seeks to dominate, oppress, exploit and otherwise destroy. The latest version of this discourse is about promoting human rights and democracy. At a time when US and Western democracies are being assailed by a toxic combination of inequality, poverty, distrust, social division and political disaffection and polarisation, at a time when US imperialism's distinctly anti-democratic edge is becoming ever more evident, this stance is only facing mounting contradictions. The present article explores them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The unipolar international order led by the USA has given way to a multipolar order with the emergence of China as a great power competitor. According to many commentators, the deterioration of Sino–US relations in recent years heralds a "new Cold War." The new Cold War differs from its namesake in many respects, and in this paper we focus on its novel territorial logic. Containing the USSR was the overriding objective of American foreign policy for nearly four decades, but in contrast, the USA and China are engaged in geopolitical‐economic competition to integrate territory into value chains anchored by their domestic lead firms through the financing and construction of transnational infrastructure (e.g., transportation networks and regional energy grids). We show this competition poses risks as well as opportunities for small states to articulate and realise spatial objectives. We present cases from Nepal and Laos that demonstrate that by hedging between China and the USA and its partners, their governments are able to pursue spatial objectives. In order to achieve them, however, they must implement significant reforms or state restructuring. The result is the emergence of what we term the 21st‐century infrastructure state, which seeks to mobilise foreign capital for infrastructure projects designed to enhance transnational connectivity. The "rise" of China has precipitated a multipolar international order and, according to some commentators, heightened US–China tension heralds a "new" Cold War. In this context, small states hedge between the USA and its partners and China, as they pursue longstanding state spatial objectives. This necessitates state restructuring, which in some cases leads to the emergence of the 21st‐century infrastructure state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines depictions of Africans in China during the period when China moved to establish diplomatic relations across the African continent – the foundation of what would become Africa–China relations today. Chinese posters were early forms of mass visual interaction with (the image of) foreign nationals. They reflect how Chinese society viewed itself in relation to others as it developed a global awareness through domestic mobilization. This study investigates how Africa and Africans are depicted in Chinese posters and how they shaped and/or reflected discourses of the period. It also examines motivations behind the inclusion of Africans in Chinese posters, arguing that this largely had a domestic rationale. By historicizing the meaning-making process of the image of Africa in 20th-century Chinese posters, this paper demonstrates that Chinese posters informed public opinion by defining friend and foe, focused more on China and her Cold War entanglements than on Africa, and simultaneously challenged and reinforced some widely held stereotypes about the continent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing from a substantial body of government archives and internal reports from mainland China, the United States, and Taiwan, this article examines how daily transnational and technological communication practices among the masses impacted the making of political culture in Maoist China. The article begins with an overview of the pervasiveness of listening to enemy radio—the overseas radio stations unsanctioned by the government of the People's Republic of China (PRC)—followed by an in-depth analysis of the historical legacies, ideological and cultural rationales, and structural deficiencies that contributed to that popularity. It then explores how local radio users' responses and active reaching out to enemy radio stations in the 1950s and 1960s prompted the competing geopolitical powers facing off across the Taiwan Strait to adjust their government policies. Ultimately, this article argues that listening to enemy radio as a technological counterculture was instrumental to the making of socialist subjectivity, arising from the populace's appropriation of the strategic interplay between the PRC government and its Cold War rivals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union engaged in nuclear deterrence as part of a larger strategic vision. Known as MAD or Mutually Assured Destruction, it included widespread investments in nuclear arsenals and delivery systems that would ensure nuclear capability in the advent of a first strike by an adversary. We revisit MAD in the context of the unfolding climate catastrophe and the context of growing tensions between the United States and China. Each government is investing in defense capabilities. Given the unfolding carbon footprint such a struggle will entail, even if China or the United States never engage in actual combat, we ask: does an unfolding military buildup between the U.S. and China assure our mutual destruction? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An editorial discusses the growth of area studies in China, paralleling the historical development of such programs in the U.S. It highlights the geopolitical motivations behind the establishment of area studies during the Cold War era and suggests that China's expansion of these programs may serve similar strategic interests, particularly in supporting its foreign policy objectives such as the Belt and Road Initiative.

One of Australia's main policy interventions in the South Pacific since the end of the Cold War was sanctions on Fiji in response to the latter's December 2006 coup. Dubbed 'Smart' sanctions, this policy was not only designed to pressure Fiji to return to democracy, but also to sustain Australia's longstanding regional leadership aspirations, aspirations which went hand in hand with its 'strategic denial' of unwelcome geopolitical challengers (Hawksley Global Change, Peace & Security, 21(1) 115-130, 2009). There has been little analysis of the unintended consequences of sanctions, namely, whether 'Smart' sanctions ironically contributed to greater strategic competition in the South Pacific, weakened regional security and prompted expressions of Pacific regionalism that excluded Australia. In the years after the coup, Canberra achieved its primary aim of being, and being seen to be, the dominant power in the South Pacific. However, during this time, Fiji "Looked North" and Pacific Island Countries (PICs) developed greater confidence in the 'New Pacific Diplomacy', thus providing the opportunity for China and other powers to expand their influence in the region (Fry and Tarte, 2015). To the backdrop of growing concern about Chinese influence, the failure of 'Smart' sanctions against Fiji shows the constraints of sanctions as a foreign policy tool. The fact that sanctions are no longer a palatable policy option has not been adequately canvassed in the literature. In this context, in order to counter Chinese influence, Australia requires greater soft power resources and a sustained effort to listen to the concerns of PICs in order to achieve Australia's interests (Newton, 2020b). In the 'New Pacific Diplomacy', threatening sanctions is likely to be counterproductive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper points out, as the conditions of knowledge in the post-Cold War era evolve, the "de-Cold Warization" of the understanding of China has become an intellectual topic of regional significance, so as the concern, brought by such historical juncture, of the Debate on Chinese Social History and within which the reflection and commentary of (the work of) Hu Qiuyuan, who is viewed as an intellectual in the middle of the political spectrum. Hu Qiuyuan's intellectual reflection was different from the official historical narrative of the Chinese Communist Party that succeeded it, as the 1930s was actually a time of great intellectual altercation. Back then, the Kuomintang, the Communist Party, the Trotskyist, and the others co-existed and interacted with each other, even pushing the CCP to alter its course of the revolutions. Specifically, because the centrists were not contained by the logic of exclusivity of other political positions, they were able to criticize the theoretical practice of other forms of dogmatism and represented the whole-of-society and the subjectivity of national interests. Moreover, Hu Qiuyuan, following the tradition of the centrists in the Debate of Social History, unfolded a theory of anti-imperialist, Third Worldist and "transcendent advancedism" (chaoyue qianjinlun). As such, Hu Qiuyuan's intellectual history might implicate the direction for the "de-Cold War" of the understanding of China and have a positive meaning in the inter-referential system of knowledge in East Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Up until the end of Cold War mainstream theories in the disciplines of International Relations and Peace Studies have overlooked the transformation in relations between actors but instead concentrated on either the constant state of conflict between units or radical changes from war to peace. Acknowledging major changes in their subject matters due to the changing conditions with the end of Cold War, both disciplines had to rethink their theoretical assumptions and renew their toolboxes. Accordingly, the constructivist turn in International Relations and the introduction of Transformational Approach to conflict in Peace Studies have brought the two disciplines closer. Similar to the Constructivist theory of International Relations that emphasizes changes rather than law-like regularities in international politics, the Conflict Transformation Approach in Peace Studies focuses on perennial transformation processes in conflicts. This paper through bringing together insights from the disciplines of International Relations and Peace Studies, analyses the cross-strait conflict between the People's Republic of China and Republic of China (Taiwan) within a constructivist framework, and from a transformational perspective by applying Hugh Miall's five-point model of conflict transformation (context transformation, structural transformation, actor transformation, issue transformation, and personal/elite transformation). Miall's five-point model is utilized in this paper to show that, despite serious crisis occurred in more than 70 years history of People's Republic of China-Republic of China conflict, the relationship of the parties has undergone a set of transformations on the way to reconciliation. Although the conflict, with serious disagreements on crucial issues, is far from being settled, the ongoing transformation creates room for negotiations and further reconciliation on issues that were previously regarded as non-negotiable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recently published collection of archival documents provides not just a trove of records on the history of one particular development campaign but also a rich resource for the study of political dynamics and socioeconomic patterns in Mao's China and the early years of the Reform era. The collection, titled Xin zhongguo xiao sanxian jianshe dangan wenxian zhengli huibian (Compilation of archival documents about New China's Small Third Front; Shanghai: Shanghai kexue jishu wenxian chubanshe, 2021), is the product of a research group headed by Xu Youwei. Documents spanning the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s in the compilation's eight volumes shed light on industrial policy, government-enterprise and civil-military relations, factional politics of the Cultural Revolution, welfare benefits, the urban-rural divide, cultural activities, the education sector, family life, gendered practices, and elements of everyday life, among other topics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a strategic adjustment to China's national defence, economic and construction policy for military purposes, the 'Third Front' construction programme (1964–1980) had a profound impact on the country's industrial layout and urban-rural relation. The built environment of this era represents the spatial orientation and strategy of China's 'road to socialism' during the Cold War. Through a historical review and field investigation, this study summarises the characteristics of Third Front construction with reference to the 'new socialist industrial mining bases' that emerged from the paradigm shift in China's urban planning. By analyzing spatial patterns and the language of spatial design from a historical perspective, this study sheds light on China's socialist architectural and planning discourse and supplements the existing scholarship on Cold War architectural historiography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reliable and well positioned human sources are essential for the US and its allies in an era of declining relations and rising tensions with China and Russia. The recruitment and handling of spies is essential if the US and its allies are to cool relations carefully, enact sound policy and curb the relentless intelligence operations of their adversaries. However, despite the superficially more open borders of China and Russia, technological advances have made the threat of street surveillance to the recruitment and handling of agents today as acute as it was in Cold War "denied area" states. This paper assesses the degree of street surveillance in contemporary Russia and China – including the impact of biometrics and online data history on the defensibility of cover and the severity of advanced CCTV networks – and the solutions intelligence agencies might adopt to address these problems. Despite the possibilities cyberspace offers espionage – for instance, by reducing the need for face to face meetings between intelligence officers and agents – the paper establishes the limitations of technological answers and argues that Western intelligence officers are entering a new era of Moscow and Beijing Rules in which they are more essential than ever and yet need to operate with absolute caution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]