Political Science 563 Government and Politics of the People s Republic of China State University of New York at Albany Fall 2014 Professor Cheng Chen Wednesday 12:00-3:00 Office: Milne Hall 214A Office Hours: Wednesday 9:30-10:30 Phone: 591-8724 E-mail: cchen@albany.edu Course Description This is a graduate course designed to provide an in-depth survey of the main theoretical, empirical, and methodological approaches to the study of Chinese politics, and to situate these approaches within the broader field of comparative politics. Although familiarity with China s political history or culture may be helpful and even desirable, it is not a prerequisite. The first part of the course covers the recent political history of China, emphasizing the period after 1949. In the second part of the course, we turn to a closer examination of key issues in the contemporary study of Chinese politics, including elite politics, political institutions, economic reform, political participation, social movements, nationalism, and international factors. Students will be exposed to the key secondary literature on these subjects. Finally, we will conclude with an assessment of the nature and the future of the current Chinese regime. The course aims to prepare interested graduate students not only for further research and teaching about China, but also for research that involves comparison with other cases and on comparative politics more generally. Course Requirements Your grade in this course will be determined in the following manner: Seminar participation 20% Oral presentations 20% Take-home midterm 30% Literature review 30% Class attendance and active, informed participation are mandatory. Students must complete the assigned readings prior to the seminar meetings. The oral presentations require each student to analyze and report on a number of assigned readings for a given week. The written assignments will include a mid-term take-home essay exam and a double-spaced 15-20 page literature review surveying and assessing the relative merits of different major approaches and arguments in the study of a particular topic in contemporary Chinese politics. Although this is not a research paper, you need to go beyond the assigned readings for your selected topic as you generate a wide-ranging critical survey of books and articles. You are encouraged to consult the instructor on the topic of your literature review. The literature review is due in the last class of the 1
semester on Wednesday, December 3. Late papers without university-approved reasons will result in grade reduction. Readings Lucien Bianco, Origins of the Chinese Revolution (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1971) [Required] Yasheng Huang, Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics: Entrepreneurship and the State (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008) [Required] Kevin J. O Brien, ed., Popular Protest in China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008) [Required] David Shambaugh, China Goes Global: The Partial Power (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013) [Required] David Lampton, Following the Leader: Ruling China, from Deng Xiaoping to Xi Jinping (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014) [Required] Evan Osnos, Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014) [Recommended] All the required books (under $30 each) are available at Mary Jane Books. The rest of the readings could be found on the course s Blackboard. Those marked with available on-line can be retrieved by clicking on E-Journals from the Libraries web page and typing in the title of the journal in the search box. August 27: Introduction Course Syllabus Kenneth Lieberthal, Reflections on the Evolution of the China Field in Political Science, in Allen Carlson et. al., eds., Contemporary Chinese Politics: New Sources, Methods, and Field Strategies (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 266-277 [available on-line at http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2010/8/09%20china%20 politics%20lieberthal/09_china_politics_lieberthal.pdf] Kevin J. O Brien, Studying Chinese Politics in an Age of Specialization, Journal of Contemporary China 20:71 (2011): 535-541[available on-line] PART I: POLITICAL HISTORY OF THE PRC September 3: Communist Revolution Lucien Bianco, Origins of the Chinese Revolution (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1971) Chalmers A. Johnson, Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1962), 1-30 2
September 10: Chinese Politics under Mao Kenneth Lieberthal, Governing China: From Revolution through Reform, 2 nd ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004), 59-122 Roderick MacFarquhar, The Succession to Mao and the End of Maoism, 1969-82, in Roderick MacFarquhar, ed. The Politics of China: The Eras of Mao and Deng, 2 nd Ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997): 248-339 September 17: The Reform Era Susan Shirk, The Political Logic of Economic Reform in China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993): 3-51 Chapters by Richard Baum and Joseph Fewsmith in Roderick MacFarquhar, ed. The Politics of China: The Eras of Mao and Deng, 2 nd Ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997): 340-532 PART II: KEY ISSUES IN CONTEMPORARY CHINESE POLITICS October 1: The Leadership David Lampton, Following the Leader: Ruling China, from Deng Xiaoping to Xi Jinping (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014) October 8: Political Institutions Bruce Dickson, Cooptation and Corporatism in China: The Logic of Party Adaptation, in Lowell Dittmer and Guoli Liu, eds. China s Deep Reform: Domestic Politics in Transition (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006): 119-143 Minxin Pei, China s Trapped Transition: The Limits of Developmental Autocracy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006): 1-16, 167-215 David Shambaugh, China s Communist Party: Atrophy and Adaptation (Washington DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2008), 161-181 October 15: Economic Reforms I: A Chinese Miracle? Jean Oi, Fiscal Reform and the Economic Foundations of Local State Corporatism in China, World Politics 45:1 (October 1992): 99-126 [available online] 3
Edward S. Steinfeld, Moving Beyond Transition in China: Financial Reform and the Political Economy of Declining Growth, Comparative Politics 34:4 (July 2002): 379-398 [available on-line] Hongbin Cai and Daniel Treisman, Did Government Decentralization Cause China s Economic Miracle? World Politics 58:4 (July 2006): 505-535 [available on-line] Christopher A. McNally, Sino-Capitalism: China s Reemergence and the International Political Economy, World Politics 64:4 (2012): 741-776 [available on-line] October 22: Economic Reforms II: Issues and Problems Yasheng Huang, Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics: Entrepreneurship and the State (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008) October 29: Political Participation Tianjian Shi, Village Committee Elections in China: Institutionalist Tactics for Democracy, World Politics 51:3 (April 1999): 385-412 [available on-line] Lianjiang Li, The Empowering Effect of Village Elections in China, Asian Survey 43:4 (July/August 2003): 648-662 [available on-line] Melanie Manion, Democracy, Community, Trust: The Impact of Elections in Rural China, Comparative Political Studies 39:3 (April 2006): 301-324 [available on-line] Lily Tsai, Solidary Groups, Informal Accountability, and Local Public Good Provision in Rural China, American Political Science Review 101:2 (2007): 355-372 [available on-line] Jessica C. Teets, Let Many Civil Societies Bloom: The Rise of Consultative Authoritarianism in China, China Quarterly 213 (2013): 19-38 [available online] November 5: Social Movements Kevin J. O Brien, ed., Popular Protest in China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008) November 12: Nationalism and National Identity Peter Hays Gries, Popular Nationalism and State Legitimation in China, in Peter Hays Gries and Stanley Rosen, eds. State and Society in 21 st -Century China (New York: Routledge, 2004): 180-194 4
Cheng Chen, The Prospects for Liberal Nationalism in Post-Leninist States (University Park: Penn State Press, 2007): 95-133 November 19: China and the World David Shambaugh, China Goes Global: The Partial Power (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013) Avery Goldstein, China s Real and Present Danger, Foreign Affairs 92:5 (2013): 136-144 [available on-line] PART III: CONCLUSION December 3: Literature Review Presentations Final assignment due 5