Book cover of Unlikely Partners: Chinese Reformers, Western Economists, and the Making of Global China by Julian Gewirtz
Asia

Unlikely Partners: Chinese Reformers, Western Economists, and the Making of Global China

Unlikely Partners recounts the story of how Chinese politicians and intellectuals looked beyond their country’s borders for economic guidance at a key crossroads in the nation’s tumultuous twentieth century. Julian Gewirtz offers a dramatic tale of competition for influence between reformers and hardline conservatives during the Deng Xiaoping era, bringing to light China’s productive exchanges with the West. […Learn More]

Book cover of China, the UN, and Human Protection: Beliefs, Power, Image by Rosemary Foot
International & World Politics

China, the UN, and Human Protection: Beliefs, Power, Image 

Over a relatively short period of time, Beijing moved from dismissing the UN to embracing it. How are we to make sense of the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) embrace of the UN, and what does its engagement mean in larger terms?

This study focuses directly on Beijing’s involvement in one of the most contentious areas of UN activity — human protection — contentious because the norm of human protection tips the balance away from the UN’s Westphalian state-based profile, towards the provision of greater protection for the security of individuals and their individual liberties […Learn More]

Asia

Beyond the Steppe Frontier: A History of the Sino – Russian Border

A comprehensive history of the Sino-Russian border, one of the longest and most important land borders in the world

The Sino-Russian border, once the world’s longest land border, has received scant attention in histories about the margins of empires. Beyond the Steppe Frontier rectifies this by exploring the demarcation’s remarkable transformation―from a vaguely marked frontier in the seventeenth century to its twentieth-century incarnation as a tightly patrolled barrier girded by watchtowers, barbed wire, and border guards. […Learn More]