This PhD is a study of the connections between tourism and nation-building and between tourism and the construction of national identity in Taiwan during the years when the Cold War was at its height starting in 1945 and taking the story up to around 1979. After 1949, Taiwan was positioned as "Free China" and this orientation in the larger struggle between Communism and the 'free world' profoundly shaped the development of tourism policies and practices and, in turn, shaped a less explicit project of nation-building within Taiwan itself. The thesis examines the discourse of tourism, the development of tourism policies, tourism institutions and tourism facilities, showing how these came to be defined by the concerns of the Guomindang government in Taiwan, respectively, to distance itself from the legacy of Japanese colonialism, to project itself as being at the forefront of the struggle against Communism and 'Russian' expansionism and, at the same time, to project itself as a bastion of 'freedom' and, in particular, as the protector of an authentic Chinese heritage. The thesis offers close readings of the ways that meanings were encoded in certain tourist sites and facilities. In the context of the Cold-War, "Free China", as constructed through tourism, was a project in which the GMD party-state collaborated closely with the USA, which provided financial aid and expertise, as well as military and moral support. Though it cannot be said that the project of building "Free China" was a failure, the rhetoric and project of "Free China" became increasingly irrelevant by the 1970s, as the political alignments of the Cold War changed. In this decade, the tourism industries increasingly loosened their ties with government, as private enterprise was encouraged to create tourist facilities and the institutions and practices of the tourist industry were deregulated. The affluent middle classes, learning to use their new leisure, discovered Taiwan for the first time through travel; at the same time they increasingly clamoured to travel abroad and the demand for the freedom to travel became one of the most insistent political demands that fed the emergence of a civil society in Taiwan. In 1979 that right was granted, and it thus marks a suitable end-point for the thesis.

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Having suffered a 'century of humiliation,' a ruinous war with Japan and a highly divisive civil war, China was looking for answers to the problems that had plagued it prior to the Revolution. Politicians, philosophers and film directors of the 1940s had played a key role in identifying exactly what the social problems facing China were. Following the Revolution in 1949 the newly victorious Communist Party of China would show the country what the solutions were. Whilst Mao's desire to reconstruct Chinese culture has been well documented, less attention has been given to the way in which propaganda was used in a highly integrated way to present this message to the people through a variety of different mediums. This thesis focuses on the use of specific 'Model Workers' to identify and examine the way in which poster propaganda and the cinema were used to further the Party's goals of national unity, cultural reform and the construction of a socialist state prior to the start of the Cultural Revolution in the mid-1960s.

During the Cold War era, the island of Jinmen was the frontline of the Republic of China in its military standoff with the People’s Republic of China. From 1949 to 1992, the life of the islanders was profoundly disturbed and altered by wars and militarization generated by the bipolar politics. Despite this, the localized patrilineages dating from imperial times remain central to the organization of local social life. Grounded on fifteen months of fieldwork in a patrilineal community, this dissertation demonstrates the significant roles of kinship and kinship-related rituals in sustaining the local social fabric through turmoil and uncertainty during and after the Cold War. The first part of this thesis focuses on lineage ancestral sacrifices, domestic worship, and funerals. The continuation of rituals that sustain patterns of interpersonal relationships is argued to constitute a means of negating the destruction of social order experienced in the period of military control and conflict. Yet, against the background of these ritual continuities, the thesis also examines how they have been adapted to shifting circumstances, such as the involvement of military and political authorities in folk ritual practices as a means for securing their legitimacy, and the material changes in rituals that have accompanied rapid commercialization from the 1990s. The second part focuses on the impact of the Cold War on local political and economic life and state-society relations. Despite some salient changes, the ways that people define their social roles and relate to one another are shown to have remained largely framed by values and morals from the sphere of kinship. Kinship therefore actually continues to constitute a distinctive feature of the local political-economic structure, countering an often-seen formula assuming causal relations between the dramatic political-economic changes and the declining role of kinship or “traditional” values in orienting people’s life and action.

This thesis has two categories of contribution, the first of which is theoretical, while the latter may be considered practical or applied. The thesis makes theoretical contributions both to nonviolence theory and to the field of Girardian studies. With regard to the former, the thesis challenges entrenched categorisation methods within nonviolence research that risk homogenising the movements under study. In demonstrating how Girardian theory can provide one additional analytical angle from which to view and understand nonviolent movements, it is argued that our analyses of these movements needs to be broadened still further. The thesis also contributes to Girardian theory directly by challenging its most problematic element: Girard’s insistence on the primacy of Christianity. By bringing Girard’s ideas into conversation with Tibetan Buddhist philosophy, this particular aspect of his thought is challenged, thereby making the rest of his corpus more accessible (and more acceptable) to a multicultural audience. Additionally, while Girard himself has very little to say about how his own style of nonviolent ideals might actually be pursued in the contemporary world, this thesis offers an original example of how his goals have been realised in a real-life political (and non-Christian) situation: the Tibetan freedom movement. Thus, the thesis aims to expand the range of Girard’s applicability by thinking about how his ideas could inform our understandings of contemporary political activity for Tibet. Further to this, the applied aim of this thesis is to illuminate the internal dynamics of the Tibetan freedom movement. Although this movement has a strong collective identity, I seek to reveal internal disparities that may be preventing it from achieving positive results. My research in McLeod Ganj, a Tibetan refugee settlement in northern India, shows that members of the refugee population generally have strong opinions about what constitute acceptable nonviolent methods in their freedom movement, and believe that these are in confluence with the philosophy of the Dalai Lama, their traditional temporal and spiritual leader. However, through the application of Rene Girard’s analytical perspective, this thesis reveals a fundamental (and generally unrecognised) variation between the understandings of the public and the Dalai Lama with regard to nonviolence as practiced.

The breakup of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1991 has had a variety of significant repercussions on Chinese politics, foreign policy, and other aspects. This doctoral project examines the evolution of Chinese intellectual perceptions of the Soviet Union in the 1980s and 1990s, before and after the collapse. Relying on a larger body of updated Chinese sources, this thesis will offer re-evaluations of many key issues in post-Mao Chinese Sovietology. The following topics will be explored or re-examined: Chinese views of Soviet policies in the early 1980s prior to Mikhail Gorbachev’s assumption of power; Chinese perceptions of Gorbachev’s political reform from the mid-1980s onward, before the outbreak of the Tiananmen Incident in 1989; Chinese scholars’ evolving views on Gorbachev from the 1980s to 1990s; the Chinese use of Vladimir Lenin and his policies in the early 1980s and early 1990s for bolstering and legitimizing the CCP regime after the Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen Incident, respectively; and the re-evaluations of Leonid Brezhnev and Joseph Stalin since the mid-1990s. First, the thesis argues that the changing Chinese views on the USSR were not only shaped by the ups-and-downs of Sino-Soviet (and later Sino-Russian) relations, China’s domestic political climate, and the political developments in Moscow. Even more importantly, views changed in response to the earth-shaking event of the rise and fall of world communism in the last two decades of the 20th century. Second, by researching the country of the Soviet Union, Chinese Soviet-watchers did not focus on the USSR alone, but mostly attempted to confirm and legitimize the Chinese state policies of reform and open door in both decades. By examining the Soviet past, Chinese scholars not only demonstrated concern for the survival of the CCP regime, but also attempted to envision the future direction and position of China in the post-communist world. This included analysis of how China could rise to be a powerful nation under the authoritarian one-party rule, without succumbing to Western democracy and the sort of collapse that doomed the USSR. In short, Chinese research on Soviet socialism has primarily served to trace the current problems of Chinese socialism, in order to legitimize their solutions – rather than a truth-seeking process devoted to knowledge of the Soviet Union.

This thesis is a study of the People’s Republic of China’s foreign economic policy towards Japan between 1949 and 1965. In particular, the thesis explores Chinese policy-makers’ ideas about Japan in the wake of the War of Resistance against Japan (1937-1945), and considers how those ideas shaped China’s foreign economic policy towards Japan between 1949 and 1965. To do so, the thesis employs a four-part ideas framework that examines Chinese policy-makers’ background, foreground, cognitive and normative ideas about Japan, and shows how the interaction between these four different idea types shaped China’s Japan policy between 1949 and 1965. Furthermore, the thesis draws on over 200 recently declassified Chinese-language archival records from the Chinese Foreign Ministry, as well as additional Chinese, Japanese, US and British archival sources. It argues that China’s experience of Japanese imperialism, industrialisation and war during the first half of the twentieth century deeply shaped Chinese ideas about Japan after 1949, though in ways that at first seem counterintuitive. Although Japan had waged a brutal war against China, Chinese policy-makers viewed Japan as an important source of industrial goods, technology and expertise, and a symbol of a modern, industrialised nation-state. However, China’s experience of Japanese imperialism and militaristic aggression often made it difficult to justify the policy of ‘trading with the enemy’. Ultimately, the thesis argues that China sought to expand economic ties with Japan after 1949 because Chinese policy-makers believed that doing so would assist China in becoming a modern and industrialised state, one that was strong enough to withstand foreign imperialism and restore its central position in the international system. Chinese conceptions of Japan thus help to explain how Japan became China’s largest trade partner by 1965, despite the bitter legacy of the War of Resistance and the Cold War divide between the two countries after 1949.

Dans le cadre des relations francochinoises durant la période maoïste (1949-1978), la coopération industrielle entre les deux pays peut être considérée comme une réussite remarquable. Pondérées à l'origine dans les années 1950, leurs relations économiques vont se développer principalement dans le domaine de l’industrie pendant la décennie suivante, pour arriver à leur apogée dans les années 1970, grâce à trois facteurs favorables : l'établissement des relations diplomatiques en 1964 qui offre l’opportunité non seulement de créer des liens stables indispensables aux futurs contacts économiques bilatéraux, les deux gouvernements jouant alors un rôle de coordinateur de cette coopération industrielle ; l’amélioration des relations sino-américaines et la politique de libéralisation du commerce estouest par Nixon, fournissent un terrain international propice au développement du commerce sino-occidental ; le plan économique du gouvernement chinois fondé sur l'importation de technologies et de matériels occidentaux -- notamment le « plan 43 » --, donne une base financière à la coopération industrielle avec la France. Les résultats de cette coopération sont considérables : développement manifeste du commerce sino-français de grande envergure ; des sociétés françaises tirent profit de l’ouverture du marché chinois pendant la période de la Révolution culturelle ; grâce aux projets de coopération mis en place, notamment ceux d'usines clé en main, la Chine accélère la modernisation de diverses industries, -- électriques, d’engrais, de fibres chimiques, de communication, etc. --, tout en maintenant ainsi l'équilibre de son développement économique. / In the framework of French-Sino relations during the Maoist period (1949-1978), the industrial cooperation between the two countries can be considered as a remarkable success. From a steady beginning in the 1950s, their economic relations principally developed in the industrial domain in the following decade, so as to reach their peak in the 1970s because of three favorable factors. Above all, the establishment of their diplomatic relations in 1964 offered the opportunity to create stable indispensable connections of bilateral economic contacts in the future, then the two governments also played a role as coordinators of this industrial cooperation. Besides, the improvement of Sino-American relations and the political liberalization of East-West commerce promoted by Nixon, provided a propitious international environment for the Sino-Occidental commercial development. Last but not the least, economic the plan of the Chinese government, based on the importation of Western technologies and materials, particularly the “43 plan”, provided a financial basis for the industrial cooperation with France.The results of this cooperation are considerable: Sino-French commerce obtained a large scale of obvious development; French companies benefiting from the economic openness of the Chinese market during the period of the Cultural Revolution; thanks to the implementation of these cooperation projects, particularly the “key-in-hand factories”, China accelerated the modernization of diverse industries in electricity, fertilizers, chemical fibers, communication, etc., -- while maintaining the balance of its economic development.

This thesis examines the nature of mass factionalism and rebellious alignment during the Chinese Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1968. This period in Chinese history presents an internecine mass conflict that boasts the largest political upheavals of the 20th century. The most puzzling question of the explosion of this intense rebellious rivalry lies in the mechanisms and processes of insurgents’ political choices: Why did people join and affiliate with different insurgent groups? What decision did people make and what were their reasons? In conventional social structural analyses of contentious politics, mass actors’ decisions are affected by functionally differentiated interests inherent in their pre-existing social positions. This model defines mass rebellion and factional alignment as a form of interest group politics, attributing political choices to participants’ pre-existing sociopolitical status quo and thus pits different social groups against one another. As a result, similar occupational and status groups in the previous hierarchical structure would make similar political choices that lead them to form well-defined competing factions. In contrast to this static structural interpretation, I propose a contextual process model to analyze processes of political division and factional contention within political movements. With a case study of Guangzhou, I argue that rebellious alignment was rooted in their political interactions in a rapidly evolving phase of the conflict, rather than rising from the tensions that existed between different socio-economic layers of society. During the times of radical instability such as the Chinese Cultural Revolution, political ambiguity and contingency were the defining characteristics. In such unstable political environment, the basic elements of the movement changed so many times: each phase of the rebel movement projected itself by means of different actors, agendas, targets, and so on. Consequently, individual rebels observed their embedded local political environment, interpreted it, and subsequently chose a course of action in a dynamic process. In this regard, mass actors from identical social strata in the previous hierarchical structure would make different political choices and tactically choose their factional camp.