Cover Story

A Pacific Dragon? 21st Century Chinese Foreign Policy By Jenny Lin
[September 5, 2009 | 4 Comments]

As the People’s Republic of China pursues its quest for economic success and influence, its policy of focusing on the economy while adopting a non-threatening appearance should last well into the 21st century. However, despite Beijing’s attempts at ensuring a peaceful rise to power, the future of China will not be as unobstructed as the leadership would like.

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Globalization and the Market Economy in Film and Culture
[January 28, 2010 | Arts & Culture, National Focus: China]

As the city gains diversity but loses its own national identity, its individuals lose their own sense of identity. As the market economy influences the city to adopt the impersonal exchange model, the individuals become increasingly alienated from their fellow citizens. As the international money economy reinforces the importance of personal wealth, the metropolitans focus on the pursuit of gain over personal desires.



Disentanglement: A Case to End U.S. Arms Sales to Taiwan
[December 23, 2009 | National Focus: China, Political Science]

[Ending US arm sales to Taiwan] sacrifices none of the major U.S. goals in the Taiwan Strait and eliminates all the unpleasant consequences. The U.S. would avoid escalating the arms race with China and at the same time protect itself from Taiwanese entrapment and shirking.



What Taiwan’s Closer Ties with China Means to Me
[December 23, 2009 | Blog, National Focus: China]

I’m going to be frank—I don’t have any elaborate theories lined up, and I’m hesitant to offer any kind of bold predictions. Instead, I hope to offer a perspective or two from my own experiences.
Having grown up in Taiwan and received the bulk of my education there, there is no doubt that I view Taiwan [...]



Representations of the Beijing Olympics
[August 31, 2009 | Arts & Culture, National Focus: China, Pending, Political Science]

How did American newspapers portray the Beijing Olympics before and after the IOC’s decision? More specifically, did they cover the Olympics in a positive, negative, mixed, or neutral light, and why? In this paper, I seek to answer these questions within the specific context of five American newspapers



Perspectives of Culture: Chinese Film Culture in America and American Film Culture in China
[February 8, 2009 | Arts & Culture]

When most Americans think of Chinese cinema, they think of movies like Ang Lee’s 2000 martial arts epic “Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.” Indeed, “Crouching Tiger” is one of the most successful international movies at the US box office [...]



A Book Review of Social States: China in International Institutions 1980-2000
[February 8, 2009 | Political Science]

In Social States, Alastair Iain Johnston sets out to investigate two related questions: 1) whether realpolitik state preferences and practices are a function of material conditions or realpolitik norms (198) and 2) why Chinese foreign policymakers, in a threateningly “unipolar” environment of [...]



Understanding the Taiwan Crisis: Foreign Policy or Domestic Issue?
[January 12, 2009 | Political Science]

As prominent political scientists often state, a country’s foreign policy is strongly linked to its domestic policy. Taking this simple idea, no other crisis in the history of the world complicates and yet reinforces it much like the current Taiwan Crisis [...]