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This article compares Xi Jinping with Deng Xiaoping from two perspectives: first, how their differing backgrounds influenced how they played the role. Second, how the situation of China in 1978 whe...

The Chinese Communist system was from its very inception based on an inherent contradiction and tension, and the Cultural Revolution is the latest and most violent manifestation of that contradiction. Built into the very structure of the system was an inner conflict between the desiderata, the imperatives, and the requirements that technocratic modernization on the one hand and Maoist values and strategy on the other. The Cultural Revolution collects four papers prepared for a research conference on the topic convened by the University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies in March 1968. Michel Oksenberg opens the volume by examining the impact of the Cultural Revolution on occupational groups including peasants, industrial managers and workers, intellectuals, students, party and government officials, and the military. Carl Riskin is concerned with the economic effects of the revolution, taking up production trends in agriculture and industry, movements in foreign trade, and implications of Masoist economic policies for China’s economic growth. Robert A. Scalapino turns to China’s foreign policy behavior during this period, arguing that Chinese Communists in general, and Mao in particular, formed foreign policy with a curious combination of cosmic, utopian internationalism and practical ethnocentrism rooted both in Chinese tradition and Communist experience. Ezra F. Vogel closes the volume by exploring the structure of the conflict, the struggles between factions, and the character of those factions.

Ezra F. Vogel is the Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences Emeritus at Harvard. He was born to a Jewish family in 1930 in Delaware, Ohio. He graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1950 and joined the army for two years before he received his Ph.D

We are all beneficiaries of the far-sighted scholars and foundation executives who launched the center. They realized during the ColdWar, whenChina and theWest had almost no contact with each other, that someday the West and China would come into contact and that the world would be served by a better understanding of China. As early as 1949, some academics began proposing more studies of Communist China. But Senator Joseph McCarthy’s ranting about Communist spies and sympathizers infiltrating our government and our universities gave rise to fear that paralyzed anyone who wanted to study “Red China.” After McCarthy died in 1957, several academics began to put their wishes into action. In 1958–59, Franz Schurmann had been a lonely scholar trying to study contemporary China in Hong Kong with the help of the Union Research Institute, and after he returned to the United States he urged the establishment of a center that would allow more scholars to come. In 1959, John Fairbank, who was then president of the Association for Asian Studies, with the cooperation of the Ford Foundation invited 22 participants to a meeting in Gould House in Dobbs Ferry, New York, to consider how to expand studies of contemporary China. After the end of the meeting Fairbank yielded to those who believed that the future of Chinese studies belonged to the disciplines and that the Social Sciences Research Council (SSRC) and the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), which were organized by disciplines, were in a better position than the Association of Asian Studies. So under the Joint Committee

Nakasone Yasuhiro was one of the great statesmen of the period following World War II. He had the breadth of perspective and the poise that comes from having been a naval officer and an official in...

Lucian Pye, long-time political science professor at MIT, past president of the American Political Science Association, passed away aged 86 on 5 September 2008. He was known particularly for his perceptive analysis of Chinese political culture and his central role in building institutions for the study of China. Lucian Pye was born in Shanxi where his father Watts O. Pye was a Congregational missionary. Watts, a Minnesota farm boy born in 1878, studied at Carleton College and in 1907, immediately after graduating from Oberlin Theological Seminary, went to Fenzhou mission, Shanxi province. Only seven years earlier, all but two of the missionaries then at the mission had been killed by the Boxers. Watts was unable initially to relate to the local people because he arrived without language training, but he nevertheless became very successful in helping the mission raise money, gain converts and expand the number of churches. He became a leader among missionaries in China, raising money for a hospital and for nearby roads and helping found the Oberlin-Shanxi programme. He saw his role as an educator, setting up bible training as a vehicle for gaining converts. However, as he observed the low quality of leadership in some of the churches established by the mission, he began to focus on identifying promising young men and supporting them to get better training in seminaries. He died in 1926 aged 48 when Lucian was only five,1 but Lucian remained in Shanxi with his mother Gertrude Chaney Pye who had joined the Fenzhou mission before her marriage. After some years in Oberlin, Ohio schools, Lucian returned to China with his mother, attending high school at the North American School in Beijing. As an undergraduate at Carleton College, Lucian met Mary Toombs Waddill. They married in 1945 and became life-long partners. She is listed as a co-author of the book Asian Power and Politics: Cultural Dimensions of Authority, but she played a key role as editor, typist and sounding board for all his works, as Lucian gratefully acknowledged at the beginning of each book. Combining dedication and intellectual vitality with Southern graciousness and generosity, Mary was Lucian's inseparable companion. Lucian's best childhood friend, Chuck Cross, and two of his closest later friends, Doak Barnett and John Lindbeck, all shared the same background, as children of missionaries in China who served as US marines in China during the

Chen Yun, one year younger than Deng Xiaoping, was born 100 years ago. For several decades beginning in 1931 when he joined the Central Committee at 26, he was ranked higher in the Party than Deng. Although known as an ‘economist’, Chen played a much broader role, in organization work, high-level Party discipline, urban administration, and basic Party policy. He was the key person to link China and Russia following the Zunyi Conference. He was head of the Organization Department from 1937 to 1943. He pioneered the liberation of urban areas as the leader in Harbin and later in Shenyang. He led the fight to get inflation under control during 1949–1952 and led the organization of the first five year plan. He was one of the most vocal against the leap forward and one of the most instrumental in guiding readjustment afterwards. On many occasions he withdrew from leadership and nourished his health. After 1978, he was the only person who spoke to Deng as an equal. Chen Yun was cautious, believing that progress ...

If both China and Japan wish to improve relations, I suggest they consider the following proposals.Japan should avoid actions China considers provocative. Japanese top leaders should not visit Yasu...

In this exerpt from a presentation of the same title, Vogel examines some key changes that have occurred in China and in the United States that have an impact on US-China relations and then offers comments about responses that might be appropriate for Japan to consider.