Asia and Pacific
What do China's leaders mean when they say that the Chinese system is democratic and getting more so? To help answer this question, the influential John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution offers a translated set of key writings by Yu, an adviser to Chinese President Hu Jintao.
The longtime Asia hand Overholt discusses what he thinks is right (especially in China) and wrong (especially in India and Japan) with Asian cultures, politics, elites, and economic and security policies.
Dissenting from the conventional view that extremism is caused by religious belief, poverty, or repression, Ollapally presents a series of concise yet probing historical analyses of how security concerns, both domestic and international, led South Asian states to foster extremist movements in their own backyards.
Su's detailed but fast-paced account dissects Beijing's and Taipei's secret contacts in the early 1990s, the history of the so-called 1992 consensus, how Lee consolidated and used power, the origins and consequences of the 1999 crisis, and how electoral dynamics shaped the evolution of former Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian's strategy.
Bruce Gilley and Larry Diamond, eds.
The contributors to this conference volume ask not whether China will democratize but how: by following the path of peaceful transition exemplified by Taiwan or in a way that involves more turbulence?
Based on a year's fieldwork, interrogation records, and anonymous leaflets, among other sources, this book argues that Thailand's overcentralized state failed to give meaningful participation to ethnically Malay Muslim citizens.
