NEW PROFESSOR: SHEENA C. GREITENS
Course Description
This is a graduate-level seminar on Chinese politics and foreign policy since 1949, designed to give you the tools that you need to analyze and understand China’s development as a world power and its growing impact on global politics.
The course is composed of three sections. The first provides a historical foundation in China’s domestic politics and foreign policy. It will look at the importance of the revolution that brought the CCP to power in shaping both domestic politics and foreign policy throughout the Cold War, and the impact of the crisis that the CCP experienced in 1989 on both internal and external dynamics. The second part of the course examines governance and domestic politics in China, including how governance works, what contemporary challenges to governance exist, and how the regime attempts to maintain control over its own agents and Chinese society. The third section examines China’s foreign and security policy: the impact of nationalism and domestic audiences; China’s institutional engagement and participation in international initiatives; contemporary conflict and security behavior; and where China fits in global discussions about human rights and democracy. The course concludes by assessing the likely future international environment in East Asia, and examining the forces that shape American strategy in the region.
By the end of the course, you should be familiar with the key events, debates, and questions in the study of Chinese politics and foreign policy. You should be able to use your knowledge of theories from comparative politics and international relations to explain these events and outcomes, and you should be able to articulate how and why this historical and theoretical knowledge helps us understand and respond to China’s presence and role in world politics today. The assignments in the course will then ask you to take that knowledge and apply it to contemporary policy problems involving China.