Relations between China and Russia have evolved dramatically since their first diplomatic contact, particularly during the twentieth century. During the past decade China and Russia have made efforts to strengthen bilateral ties and improve cooperation on a number of diplomatic fronts. The People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation maintain exceptionally close and friendly relations, strong geopolitical and regional cooperation, and significant levels of trade. In The Future of China-Russia Relations, scholars from around the world explore the current state of the relationship between the two powers and assess the prospects for future cooperation and possible tensions in the new century. The contributors examine Russian and Chinese perspectives on a wide range of issues, including security, political relationships, economic interactions, and defense ties. This collection explores the energy courtship between the two nations and analyzes their interests and policies regarding Central Asia, the Korean Peninsula, and Taiwan.

This book explores the making of public policy for Hong Kong between 1918 and 1958. During much of this period, the Hong Kong government had limited policy-making capabilities. Many new policies followed initiatives either from the Colonial Office or from politicians in Hong Kong. This book examines the balance of political power influencing how such decisions were reached and who wielded the most influence—the Hong Kong or British governments or the politicians. Gradually, the Hong Kong government, through implementing new policies, improved its own policy-making capabilities and gained the ability to exercise greater autonomy. The policy areas covered by this book include the implementation of rent controls in 1922, the management of Hong Kong’s currency from 1929 to 1936, the resolution of the financial dispute over matters arising from World War II, the origins of Hong Kong’s public housing and permanent squatter resettlement policies, negotiations over Hong Kong’s contribution to its defence costs and the background to the granting of formal financial autonomy in 1958. Governors, Politics and the Colonial Office will be of interest to historians and political scientists, and to anyone with a general interest in the social, economic and political development of Hong Kong.

This volume of The Grand Scribe's Records includes the second segment of Han-dynasty memoirs and deals primarily with men who lived and served under Emperor Wu (r. 141--87 B.C.). The lead chapter presents a parallel biography of two ancient physicians, Pien Ch'üeh and Ts'ang Kung, providing a transition between the founding of the Han dynasty and its heyday under Wu. The account of Liu P'i is framed by the great rebellion he led in 154 B.C. and the remaining chapters trace the careers of court favorites, depict the tribulations of an ill-fated general, discuss the Han's greatest enemy, the Hsiung-nu, and provide accounts of two great generals who fought them. The final memoir is structured around memorials by two strategists who attempted to lead Emperor Wu into negotiations with the Hsiung-nu, a policy that Ssu-ma Ch'ien himself supported.

The study covers the whole period of the Lease, with all its crowded events and dramatic changes, as they affected the native inhabitants and their relationship with the government and, over time, the many times larger new urban population.

Imperial China's dynastic legal codes provide a wealth of information for historians, social scientists, and scholars of comparative law and of literary, cultural, and legal history. One of the most important law codes in Chinese history, the Ming Code regulated all the perceived major aspects of social affairs, aiming at the harmony of political, economic, military, familial, ritual, international, and legal relations in the empire and cosmic relations in the universe. Providing us with rich materials on Ming history, it is a fundamental source for understanding Chinese society and culture.

“The authors make some very critical interventions in this debate and scholars engaged in the environmental ‘pollution haven’ and ‘race to the bottom’ debates will need to take the arguments made here seriously, re-evaluating their own preferred theories to respond to the insightful theorizing and empirically rigorous testing that Zeng and Eastin present in the book.” —Ronald Mitchell, University of Oregon China has earned a reputation for lax environmental standards that allegedly attract corporations more interested in profit than in moral responsibility and, consequently, further negate incentives to raise environmental standards. Surprisingly, Ka Zeng and Joshua Eastin find that international economic integration with nation-states that have stringent environmental regulations facilitates the diffusion of corporate environmental norms and standards to Chinese provinces. At the same time, concerns about “green” tariffs imposed by importing countries encourage Chinese export-oriented firms to ratchet up their own environmental standards. The authors present systematic quantitative and qualitative analyses and data that not only demonstrate the ways in which external market pressure influences domestic environmental policy but also lend credence to arguments for the ameliorative effect of trade and foreign direct investment on the global environment.

Hong Kong's oldest Western cemetery garden is located in Happy Valley. This history and tour highlights the need for urgent action to conserve the built and natural heritage resources of this important cultural landscape. The author challenges the reader to reconsider the basic approach to heritage conservation adopted in Hong Kong where a false dichotomy persists between natural and built heritage conservation initiatives. The Hong Kong Cemetery provides an excellent example of a precious cultural landscape which is deteriorating because simplistic approaches to site management have failed to understand and protect the complex interrelationship between the natural (flora and fauna habitats) and built (monuments and memorials) heritage resources. The first three chapters introduce the cemetery garden concept as it evolved in early nineteenth-century Europe, and was eventually established in Hong Kong by the British. The second half of the book provides a self-guided tour of the cemetery highlighting its resources as well as explaining the main conservation problems and possible solutions to protect the cemetery.

Colonial built environments were an expres­sion of imperial aspirations, a manifestation of power, a tool in the civilization of indig­enous cultures, a re-creation of a home away from home, and a place to live and work for both colonizers and colonized. Experts on city planning, architecture, and Asian and imperial history detail colonization’s influence at both the top and bottom levels of society and its representation in stone, iron, and concrete. Creating the colonial built environment was a multilayered, unpredictable process. This study emphasizes the diversity of the colonial built form from Harbin to Hanoi and differing experiences of foreign rule, as well as the flexible interac­tions between colonizers and colonized and the many risks of building and living in such colonies and treaty ports.

Since the establishment of the Red Army in 1927, China’s military has responded to profound changes in Chinese society, particularly its domestic politics, shifting economy, and evolving threat perceptions. Recently tensions between China and Taiwan and other east Asian nations have aroused great interest in the extraordinary transformation and new capabilities of the Chinese army. In A History of the Modern Chinese Army, Xiaobing Li, a former member of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), provides a comprehensive examination of the PLA from the Cold War to the beginning of the twenty-first century that highlights the military’s central function in modern Chinese society. In the 1940s, the Chinese army was in its infancy, and many soldiers were rural conscripts and volunteers who had received little formal schooling. The Chinese military rapidly increased its mobility and weapon strength, and the Korean War and Cold War offered intense combat experience that not only allowed soldiers to hone their fighting techniques but also helped China to develop military tactics tailored to the surrounding countries whose armies posed the most immediate threats. Yet even in the 1970s, the completion of a middle school education (nine years) was considered above-average, and only 4 percent of the 224 top Chinese generals had any college credit hours. However, in 1995 the high command began to institute massive reforms to transform the PLA from a labor-intensive force into a technology-intensive army. Continually seeking more urban conscripts and emphasizing higher education, the PLA Reserve Officer Training and Selection program recruited students from across the nation. These reservists would become commissioned officers upon graduation, and they majored in atomic physics, computer science, and electrical engineering. Grounding the text in previously unreleased official Chinese government and military records as well as the personal testimonies of more than two hundred PLA soldiers, Li charts the development of China’s armed forces against the backdrop of Chinese society, cultural traditions, political history, and recent technological advancements. A History of the Modern Chinese Army links China’s military modernization to the country’s growing international and economic power and provides a unique perspective on China’s esttablishment and maintenance of one of the world’s most advanced military forces.

Geoffrey Robley Sayer (1887- 1962) completed this book before World War II as a sequel to his earlier work, Hong Kong: birth, adolescence and coming of age, which was published in 1937.