Albert Wu— Consider the following stereoscopic photograph, taken by the famous travel photographer James Ricalton in 1900 and published by the popular distributor Underwood and Underwood in a box set called China Through the Stereoscope. On first glance, the photograph appears to be a typical example of orientalist travel photography
John Makeham— Forty years ago, intellectual historian Joseph Levenson famously commented: “What the West has probably done to China is to change the latter’s language—what China has done to the West is to enlarge the latter’s vocabulary.” Levenson was referring to a process that began in the decades immediately before
Michael Murphree and Dan Breznitz— The front pages are crowded with eye-grabbing headlines declaring that the end is nigh for the Chinese economic miracle. The stock market collapse over the last three months as well as signs of declining energy consumption, slower export growth, and declining demand for industrial raw
Gerard Lemos— The protesters had already started gathering last Saturday afternoon. It was hot and sunny in Admiralty, the business district, and there are no trees, no shade. They sat around on walls, chatting, doing nothing. There were no leaders, no banners, no speeches, no chanting. This was quite a
Everyone from Liza Minnelli to R. Kelly knows that money makes the world go round. This month, Yale University Press authors are expanding on that observation to explore the fields of economics and global finance under the banner Where is the Money? It might seem like a simple question, but
The U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue (S&ED) is taking place in Beijing, China on July 9–10. In his new book, Unbalanced: The Codependency of America and China, Stephen Roach addresses the current and prospective state-of-play in the economic relationship between China and the United States. As the S&ED approaches, we’ve
What makes the economic relationship between the United States and China so fraught with anxiety, tension, and a surprising dependency on the successes and failures of the other? Particularly throughout the economic highs and lows of the 21st century so far, the question of China’s ascendance, even so far as surpassing
Many argue that China will soon overtake the United States and become the next superpower. Timothy Beardson, author of Stumbling Giant: The Threats to China’s Future, disagrees, asserting that confronted with myriad problems and the inadequacy of response to these problems, China will not become the next superpower. Beardson does
His Holiness the fourteenth Dalai Lama turns 76 today, according to the best estimates. His role in Tibet is described by Sam van Schaik in Tibet: A History, which examines Tibetan history and politics from 600 C.E. to the present.
Headlines on China’s innovation have been popping up this week, as the world wonders what the next big economic development will be for the country, which recently surpassed Japan for the #2 rank in GDP. Both The Economist and Reuters have run stories taking insight from a new book, The