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Shih, Chih-yu. (2011) Assigning Role Characteristics to China: The Role State Versus The Ego State. Foreign Policy Analysis, doi: 10.1111/j.1743-8594.2011.00158.x This paper distinguishes and integrates national identity and national image through a deep role analysis. It argues that the meaning of China's rising rests upon the views of those who evaluate China's role playing. This role analysis mediates between international relations and Chinese foreign policy. It also mediates between China watchers and their China. The two dimensions of role-role taking and role making-generate four different discursive approaches to interpreting the rise of China, each in its own way associated with the affects of opportunity and threat. They are 'nation state,''civilization,''Tianxia,' and 'Asianism.' In response to the external view on the rise of China, Chinese narrators often take the Tianxia and nation state approaches as components of their conception of national role. These conceptions mediated by role-making and role-taking, evolve into four possible strategic focuses-national interests, imperialism, sovereignty and center-periphery. While this last strategic focus on role-taking has recently attracted enthusiastic response in China, it has been re-appropriated by social science concepts such as soft power and social capital that assume an egoistic role-making China is on the move. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the Houston Mount Everest Expedition of 1933, which resulted in the first successful air flights over Mount Everest. Rather than the story of the flights or their technical contributions, it focuses upon their political implications. Central to those implications was the project’s connection to Britain’s extreme right community. Several involved with the expedition were associated with Britain’s high imperialist, often pro-fascist, far right. Their participation in such a cutting edge project acts as one example of the modernist impulse of the far right tendency in the inter-war years. The expedition would provide an opportunity to use modern technology as a metaphor for national regeneration during a period when many saw Britain in steep decline. Some hoped it would make a strong statement to the indigenous people of that region. The flights were conducted in the spring of 1933 during the anxious debate over the future of India. To the far right, the idea of granting Indians even limited autonomy was abhorrent, and many hoped that such a feat of courage and technical prowess would convince Indians of British racial superiority and to abandon their struggles for independence. Others would interpret the meaning of the expedition in different ways, related to the extension of British power. The War Office was delighted with the potential for mapping any area of the earth and facilitating imperial control of contested territories. Still others on the far right were excited about the potential air survey and what air cargo would mean for the economic development of the Empire, linked to the extreme right dream of an autarchic imperial economy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]