China Since Tiananmen: The Politics of Transition

China Since Tiananmen is the first book to evaluate the intellectual and political trends and to assess how China has changed since the Tiananmen Incident in 1989. Fewsmith looks at intellectual trends to capture the way China's elite has assessed the social, political, economic, and intellectual trends of the past decade. Similarly, he examines the conduct of elite politics to see how the political system has, and has not, evolved over the past decade. Fewsmith puts the rise of neo-conservatism and nationalism into historical context, evaluating the changes of the past decade to the changes after the May Fourth Movement of 1919. This more comprehensive and realistic assessment of the forces that drive China today is of critical importance to anyone trying to understand Sino-U.S. relations, for those relations are themselves intrinsic to the story of China's evolution. Joseph Fewsmith is Professor of International Relations at Boston University and Director of the East Asian Interdisciplinary Studies Program. He is the author of Elite Politics in Contemporary China (M.E. Sharpe, 2001) and The Dilemmas of Reform in CHina: Political Conflict and Economic Debate (M.E. Sharpe, 1994). He has written extensively on contemporary politics in China, with articles appearing in such journals as Asian Survey, Current History, The Journal of Contemporary China, Problems of Communism, Modern China, and Comparative Studies in Society and History. He is the editor of The Chinese Economy and serves on the editorial board of The Journal of Contemporary China.

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This book offers a comprehensive assessment of the evolution of China since the Tiananmen Incident (1989).

This lucid, perceptive, and balanced account of Chinese elite politics and the public debates of the 1990s demonstrates that China is now in a new stage of politics and thought. After briefly surveying the views of China watchers in the West, Fewsmith (international relations, Boston Univ.) addresses the initial critique from Party conservatives of economic reform and globalization that formed the background to the trauma of 1989. Deng Xiaoping's 1992 moves to revive economic reform then led to an openness of policy debate without precedent in Leninist systems and to new paradigms for China. Chinese intellectuals since Confucius have been more often oriented to the state than to church or business, and the 1990s saw an explosive reemergence of semiofficial think tanks, journals, and publishers with inside ties. Fewsmith gives a clear overview of the contending new theories of liberals, postmodernists, nationalists, neostatists, and neoconservatives. President and Communist Party secretary Jiang Zemin and future Chinese leaders are constrained by these new forces, especially a well-articulated popular nationalism, making Fewsmith's book important for those trying to understand China today. Highly recommended. Charles W. Hayford, Northwestern Univ., Evanston, IL Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

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The U.S. view of China remains heavily influenced by the suppression of protest there in 1989: a monolithic and ruthless Communist Party versus pro-democracy and Western-oriented intellectuals. Yet in the intervening years, shows Fewsmith, a Boston University international relations professor, things have changed and become much more complex, in the party, among intellectuals and between the two. Party conflict continues to revolve around questions of state ownership versus the free market, but there is also debate about the effects of reforms regarding regional inequality, corruption and Chinese autonomy in an increasingly globalized world. These concerns also inform intellectual debate, and while many intellectuals still hold to the need for Western-style democracy, others are not so sure. One school of thought argues that a strong state and institutional stability must be China's primary concerns. Another contends that China must find its own path to development, which includes safeguarding many of the Maoist era notions of collectivism, and must beware of U.S. attempts to control Chinese policy and even Chinese ways of thinking. A strong nationalistic streak has also emerged in much intellectual thought that at times, as during the U.S. bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 2001, ties into popular nationalistic sentiments and presents a strong challenge to the party's continued efforts at economic modernization. Fewsmith's examination of the intellectual climate in China, and how the party tries to control and coopt China's intellectuals, while more for the specialist, is intellectual inquiry of the highest order and a revealing and surprising glimpse of a society deeply questioning just where it is going. (Sept. 20) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.