A ground-breaking exploration of the Chinese elite's consumption of luxury products and their attitudes toward luxury goods. Elite China identifies the Chinese luxury product consumers and the characteristics of their luxury consumption, explains the implications for luxury firms and marketers and most importantly, spells out strategies for international luxury brands and Chinese luxury brands to succeed in Chinese market.
How can a developing, democratic and predominantly Muslim country like Indonesia manage its foreign relations, while facing a myriad of security concerns and dilemmas in the increasingly complex post-Cold War international politics, without compromising its national interests and sacrificing its independence? Approaching this problem from the vantage point of the Indonesian foreign policy elite, this book explores the elite's perceptions about other states and the manner in which these shape the decision-making process and determine policy outcomes. The combined qualitative and quantitative research strategy draws on a unique series of in-depth interviews with 45 members of the Indonesian foreign policy elite that included the country's (present and/or former) presidents, cabinet ministers, high-ranking military officers, and senior diplomats. Among all state actors, Indonesian relations with the United States and China are the highest concern of the elite. The leaders believe that, in the future, Indonesia will increasingly have to manoeuvre between the two rival powers. While the United States during George W. Bush's presidency was seen as the main security threat to Indonesia, China is considered the main malign factor in the long run with power capabilities that need to be constrained and counter-balanced.
Using both qualitative and quantitative data derived from fieldwork in Lanzhou between 2001 and 2004, this much-needed work on ethnicity in Asia offers a major sociological analysis of Hui Muslims in contemporary China.
The transition from a planned to a market economy that began in China in the late 1970s unleashed an extraordinary series of changes, including increases in private enterprise, foreign investment, the standard of living, and corruption. Another result of economic reform has been the creation of a new class—China's new business elite. Margaret M. Pearson considers the impact that this new class is having on China's politics. She concludes that, contrary to the assumptions of Westerners, these groups are not at the forefront of the emergence of a civil society; rather, they are part of a system shaped deliberately by the Chinese state to ensure that economic development will not lead to democratization. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1997. The transition from a planned to a market economy that began in China in the late 1970s unleashed an extraordinary series of changes, including increases in private enterprise, foreign investment, the standard of living, and corruption. Another result of
Introduction : China's political elites and their challenges -- pt. I. Who governs : China's political elites. 1. Top leadership. 2. Central committee. 3. Institutional representation. 4. Factional balance -- pt. II. How to govern : challenges. 5. Snowstorms in the South. 6. The Tibet issue. 7. Sichuan earthquake. 8. Beijing olympic games -- Conclusion : China's prospects for democratization
"THE BOOK CHINA DOESN'T WANT YOU TO READ."--CNN A riveting insider's story of how the Party and big money work in China today, by a man who, with his wife, Whitney Duan, rose to the zenith of power and wealth--and then fell out of favor. She was disappeared four years ago. News of this book led to a phone call from Whitney, proof that she's alive. As Desmond Shum was growing up impoverished in China, he vowed his life would be different. Through hard work and sheer tenacity he earned an American college degree and returned to his native country to establish himself in business. There, he met his future wife, the highly intelligent and equally ambitious Whitney Duan who was determined to make her mark within China's male-dominated society. Whitney and Desmond formed an effective team and, aided by relationships they formed with top members of China's Communist Party, the so-called red aristocracy, he vaulted into China's billionaire class. Soon they were developing the massive air cargo facility at Beijing International Airport, and they followed that feat with the creation of one of Beijing's premier hotels. They were dazzlingly successful, traveling in private jets, funding multi-million-dollar buildings and endowments, and purchasing expensive homes, vehicles, and art. But in 2017, their fates diverged irrevocably when Desmond, while residing overseas with his son, learned that his now ex-wife Whitney had vanished along with three coworkers. This is both Desmond's story and Whitney's, because she has not been able to tell it herself.
China's Scientific Elite is a study of those scientists holding China's highest academic honour - membership of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Having carried out extensive systematic data collection of CAS members Cao examines the social stratification system of the Chinese science community and the way in which politics and political interference has effected the stratification. The book then goes on to compare the Chinese system to the stratification of the US scientific elite. The conclusions are fascinating, not least because one national elite resides in a democratic liberal social system, and the other in an authoritarian social system.
China expert Robert Spalding reveals the shocking success China has had infiltrating American institutions and compromising our national security. The media often suggest that Russia poses the greatest threat to America's national security, but the real danger lies farther east. While those in power have been distracted and disorderly, China has waged a six-front war on America's economy, military, diplomacy, technology, education, and infrastructure--and they're winning. It's almost too late to undo the shocking, though nearly invisible, victories of the Chinese. In Stealth War, retired Air Force Brigadier General Robert Spalding reveals China's motives and secret attacks on the West. Chronicling how our leaders have failed to protect us over recent decades, he provides shocking evidence of some of China's most brilliant ploys, including: Placing Confucius Institutes in universities across the United States that serve to monitor and control Chinese students on campus and spread communist narratives to unsuspecting American students. Offering enormous sums to American experts who create investment funds that funnel technology to China. Signing a thirty-year agreement with the US that allows China to share peaceful nuclear technology, ensuring that they have access to American nuclear know-how. Spalding's concern isn't merely that America could lose its position on the world stage. More urgently, the Chinese Communist Party has a fundamental loathing of the legal protections America grants its people and seeks to create a world without those rights. Despite all the damage done so far, Spalding shows how it's still possible for the U.S. and the rest of the free world to combat--and win--China's stealth war.
China's One Child Policy and its rigorous national focus on educational testing are well known. But what happens to those "lucky" few at the very top of the pyramid: elite university students in China who grew up under the One Child Policy and now attend the nation's most prestigious universities? How do they feel about having made it to the top of an extremely competitive educational system—as their parents' only child? What pressures do they face, and how do they cope with the expectations associated with being the best? Fragile Elite explores the contradictions and perplexities of being an elite student through immersive ethnographic research conducted at two top universities in China. Susanne Bregnbæk uncovers the intimate psychological strains students suffer under the pressure imposed on them by parents and state, where the state acts as a parent and the parents reinforce the state. Fragile Elite offers fascinating insights into the intergenerational tensions at work in relation to the ongoing shift in educational policy and definition of what a "quality" student, child, and citizen is in contemporary China.
This book examines the practices and effects of emerging international curriculum programs established by Chinese elite public high schools and supported by China's New Curriculum Reform and the Chinese-Foreign Cooperation in Running Schools (CFCRS) policy. Drawing on critical theory, the book applies sociological and anthropological approaches to the study of the educational practices of such curriculum programs and the rising Chinese elite class, as well as educational policy globally. Through analyzing a wide variety of data sources, this book focuses on examining how changing local and global contexts have influenced and shaped the educational opportunities, experiences, and aspirations of privileged urban Chinese students who are able to attend these programs and who hope to study at U.S. universities. In doing so, the book is intended to define the problematics of the internationalization of Chinese education and an emergent form of elite education in China, which are complex and embedded in the process of modernization in China. Neoliberalism, Globalization, and "Elite" Education in China: Becoming International will appeal to undergraduates, postgraduates, and academics in the fields of curriculum studies, educational policy studies, sociology of education, and anthropology of education, as well as policymakers with an interest in globalization and education, education policy, and education and international development.
