Divided China

The oneness of China is the norm. Periods of divisions are aberrations. This is how Chinese thinkers, leaders and ultimately the majority of Chinese people have regarded Chinese politics and history for more than 2,000 years. The oneness was never perfect. As long as certain minimal conditions were met and the polity which proclaimed that oneness was widely acknowledged, that was enough. Chinese ruling elites adopted this pragmatic approach so they could ensure that the ideal could always approximate ChinaOCOs reality. This is a revised edition of a study undertaken to explain what happened during one of the worst periods of division in Chinese history. What were the key factors that helped the centripetal forces to get back to the imperial norm? It begins with the final stage of decline of the Tang dynasty (618OCo907) and ends 50 years later when it became clear that the foundations for a last push towards unification were in place."

A concise and informative history of how China divided in 1949 into two regimes, why they struggled to achieve the same political goal-reunification of China—and why their struggle today continues in a more complex and dangerous way. The authors detail how the changes brought about by the 2000 election not only intensified the conflict between the regimes but locked both sides into a new contest that increased the probability of war rather than peace.

The oneness of China is the norm; periods of divisions are aberrations this is how Chinese thinkers, leaders and ultimately the majority of Chinese people have regarded Chinese politics and history for more than 2,000 years.The oneness was never perfect. However, as long as certain minimal conditions were met and the polity which proclaimed that oneness was widely acknowledged, that was enough. Chinese ruling elites adopted this pragmatic approach so they could ensure that the ideal could always approximate Chinas reality.This fascinating book is a revised edition of a study undertaken to explain what happened during one of the worst periods of division in Chinese history the Wu-tai (Five Dynasties) period. What were the key factors that helped the centripetal forces to get back to the imperial norm? It begins with the final stage of decline of the Tang dynasty (618907) and ends 50 years later, when it became clear that the foundations for a last push towards unification was in place.

Between 1044 and 1104, ideological disputes divided China’s sociopolitical elite, who organized into factions battling for control of the imperial government. Advocates and adversaries of state reform forged bureaucratic coalitions to implement their policy agendas and to promote like-minded colleagues. During this period, three emperors and two regents in turn patronized a new bureaucratic coalition that overturned the preceding ministerial regime and its policies. This ideological and political conflict escalated with every monarchical transition in a widening circle of retribution that began with limited purges and ended with extensive blacklists of the opposition. Divided by a Common Language is the first English-language study to approach the political history of the late Northern Song in its entirety and the first to engage the issue of factionalism in Song political culture. Ari Daniel Levine explores the complex intersection of Chinese political, cultural, and intellectual history by examining the language that ministers and monarchs used to articulate conceptions of political authority. Despite their rancorous disputes over state policy, factionalists shared a common repertoire of political discourses and practices, which they used to promote their comrades and purge their adversaries. Conceiving of factions in similar ways, ministers sought monarchical approval of their schemes, employing rhetoric that imagined the imperial court as the ultimate source of ethical and political authority. Factionalists used the same polarizing rhetoric to vilify their opponents—who rejected their exclusive claims to authority as well as their ideological program—as treacherous and disloyal. They pressured emperors and regents to identify the malign factions that were spreading at court and expel them from the metropolitan bureaucracy before they undermined the dynastic polity. By analyzing theoretical essays, court memorials, and political debates from the period, Levine interrogates the intellectual assumptions and linguistic limitations that prevented Northern Song politicians from defending or even acknowledging the existence of factions. From the Northern Song to the Ming and Qing dynasties, this dominant discourse of authority continued to restrain members of China’s sociopolitical elite from articulating interests that acted independently from, or in opposition to, the dynastic polity. Deeply grounded in both primary and secondary sources, Levine’s study is important for the clarity and fluidity with which it presents a critical period in the development of Chinese imperial history and government.

This book examines US subnational engagement in foreign relations, or paradiplomacy, with China and Taiwan from 1949 to 2020. As an alternative diplomatic history of the United States’ relations with divided China, it offers an in-depth chronological and thematic discussion of state and local communities’ responses to the China-Taiwan sovereignty conflict and their impact on US diplomacy. The book explains why paradiplomacy matters not only in the ‘low politics’ of economic and cultural cooperation, but also in the ‘high politics’ of diplomatic recognition. Presenting case studies of US states and cities developing policies towards divided China that paralleled, clashed or aligned with those pursued by federal agencies, it also identifies Chinese and Taiwanese objectives and strategies deployed when competing for US subnational ties. Conceptually, the book builds upon Constructivism, redefining paradiplomacy as an institutional fact, reflective of subnational identities and interests, rather than as a subnational pursuit of foreign markets, driven by objective economic forces. Featuring new empirical evidence and a novel conceptual framework for paradiplomacy, The United States’ Subnational Relations with Divided China will be a useful resource for students and scholars of US foreign policy, the politics of China and Taiwan, paradiplomacy and international relations.

When the Nationalists lost China in 1949, many of them left behind their families as they retreated to Taiwan. A half century later, through democratic elections, they lost control over Taiwan as well and began looking to a new and powerful China, where their relatives had grown rich, for a sense of identity and economic support, thus laying the groundwork for the growing integration between Taiwan and China. As exchanges across the Taiwan Strait increased, many separated families finally met after yearsof dreaming about each other in hope and in sorrow, through many eras and disast.

The present volume is a collection of papers presented at the international conference “Linguistic Awareness and Dissolution of Diglossia” held in July 2011 at Heidelberg University. The aim is to reevaluate and compare the processes of dissolution of diglossia in East Asian and in European languages, especially in Japanese, Chinese and in Slavic languages in the framework of the asymmetries in the emergence of modern written languages. Specialists from China, Japan, Great Britain, Germany and the U.S. contributed to the volume by introducing their research focusing on aspects of the dissolution of diglossic situations and the role of translation in the process. The first group of texts focuses on the linguistic concept of diglossia and the different processes of its dissolution, while the second investigates the perception of linguistic varieties in historical and transcultural perspectives. The third and final group analyses the changing cultural role and function of translations and their effect on newly developing literary languages.