Examines possible approaches the West can take in responding to China's increasing influence and growing economy, suggesting that the best course of action is to share power rather than fuel a rivalry.

School Choice in China explores the major characteristics of schooling options in China, highlighting how largely middle-class parents exploit their cultural, economic and social capital for their children's admission into choice schools. It highlights how payments such as choice fees, donations, prize-winning certificates and awards, as well as the use of guanxi, result in Chinese school choice as a parent-driven, bottom-up movement. The author also explores how schools and local governments cash in on the school choice fever in order to obtain significant economic returns, leading to policies that accommodate the needs of mostly middle-class families. He argues that although this system seems to create winners among the parties involved, it exacerbates the educational inequality that already exists in Chinese society. Chapters include: Positional competition for cultural capital Exploitation of social capital Economics of school choice Class reproduction through parental choice This book is not simply a detailed analysis of Chinese school choice practices, but also a study of the competitive middle class search for advantage for their children. As such it will be beneficial to undergraduates, postgraduates, education professionals, policy makers, and anyone with an interest in education, sociology, social policy, and the rise and future of China.

At the beginning of 1945, relations between America and the Chinese Communists couldn’t have been closer. Chinese leaders talked of America helping to lift China out of poverty; Mao Zedong himself held friendly meetings with U.S. emissaries. By year’s end, Chinese Communist soldiers were setting ambushes for American marines; official cordiality had been replaced by chilly hostility and distrust, a pattern which would continue for a quarter century, with the devastating wars in Korea and Vietnam among the consequences. In China 1945, Richard Bernstein tells the incredible story of the sea change that took place during that year—brilliantly analyzing its far-reaching components and colorful characters, from diplomats John Paton Davies and John Stewart Service to Time journalist, Henry Luce; in addition to Mao and his intractable counterpart, Chiang Kai-shek, and the indispensable Zhou Enlai. A tour de force of narrative history, China 1945 examines American power coming face-to-face with a formidable Asian revolutionary movement, and challenges familiar assumptions about the origins of modern Sino-American relations.

China is hot. The world sees a glorious future for this sleeping giant, three times larger than the United States, predicting it will blossom into the world's biggest economy by 2010. According to Chang, however, a Chinese-American lawyer and China specialist, the People's Republic is a paper dragon. Peer beneath the veneer of modernization since Mao's death, and the symptoms of decay are everywhere: Deflation grips the economy, state-owned enterprises are failing, banks are hopelessly insolvent, foreign investment continues to decline, and Communist party corruption eats away at the fabric of society. Beijing's cautious reforms have left the country stuck midway between communism and capitalism, Chang writes. With its impending World Trade Organization membership, for the first time China will be forced to open itself to foreign competition, which will shake the country to its foundations. Economic failure will be followed by government collapse. Covering subjects from party politics to the Falun Gong to the government's insupportable position on Taiwan, Chang presents a thorough and very chilling overview of China's present and not-so-distant future.

China is rising. But how should the West - and the United States in particular - respond? This could be the key geopolitical question of the twenty-first century, according to strategic expert Hugh White, with huge implications for the future security and prosperity of the West as a whole. The China Choice confronts this fundamental question, considering the options for the Asian century ahead. As China's economy grows to become the world's largest, the US has three choices: it can compete, share power, or concede leadership in Asia. The choice is momentous - as significant for the future as any the US has ever faced. China is already more formidable than any country the US has faced before - and if America does not want to find itself facing China as an enemy, it must accept it as an equal partner. Weighing the huge difficulties of accepting China as an equal with the immense cost and risks of making it an enemy, in the end the choice is simple, even if it is not easy. The US simply must share power with China in Asia. The alternative is too terrible to contemplate.

" How Taiwan can overcome internal stresses and the threat from China Taiwan was a poster child for the “third wave” of global democratization in the 1980s. It was the first Chinese society to make the transition todemocracy, and it did so gradually and peacefully. But Taiwan today faces a host of internal issues, starting with the aging of society and the resulting intergenerational conflicts over spending priorities. China's long-term threat to incorporate the island on terms similar to those used for Hong Kong exacerbates the island's home-grown problems. Taiwan remains heavily dependent on the United States for its security, but it must use its own resources to cope with Beijing's constant intimidation and pressure. How Taiwan responds to the internal and external challenges it faces—and what the United States and other outside powers do to help—will determine whether it is able to stand its ground against China's ambitions. The book explores the broad range of issues and policy choices Taiwan confronts and offers suggestions both for what Taiwan can do to help itself and what the United States should do to improve Taiwan's chances of success. "

In the past decade, China was able to carry out economic reform without political reform, while the Soviet Union attempted the opposite strategy. How did China succeed at economic market reform without changing communist rule? Susan Shirk shows that Chinese communist political institutions are more flexible and less centralized than their Soviet counterparts were. Shirk pioneers a rational choice institutional approach to analyze policy-making in a non-democratic authoritarian country and to explain the history of Chinese market reforms from 1979 to the present. Drawing on extensive interviews with high-level Chinese officials, she pieces together detailed histories of economic reform policy decisions and shows how the political logic of Chinese communist institutions shaped those decisions. Combining theoretical ambition with the flavor of on-the-ground policy-making in Beijing, this book is a major contribution to the study of reform in China and other communist countries.