After three decades¡¦ steady and tremendously economic growth, China has reemerged on the center stage of the world as an aspiring great power. Its historically unprecedented leapfrogging in the global economic share levels up its comprehensive national power exponentially, and becomes the main driving force in Asia in the context of global interdependence. In the restive North East Asia, the North Korea Nuclear Crisis facilitated the United States strategic overhaul in western Pacific. For great powers, the Korea Peninsula has been a major power struggle theater since the late eighteen century, because of its geographic location. Therefore, the balance of power in the peninsular is a matter of caution in the world leaders¡¦ calculation. The United States, Russia, Japan, China, and South Korea are the major players in the subregion, all of whom are six-party talks participants. The six-party talks was originally convened to settle the hermit kingdom¡¦s nuclear ambition. Ostensibly, it was. But, when examined from the theory of the balance of power, it has multi-pronged goals---the most realistic one is to manage the structural power transition now happening in the region. Even in the late 2007 North Korea launched a series of missile and nuclear weapon test, the function of being an adjusting and preventive agent still works in the framework. Still more explicitly, the United States treats the dialogue mechanism as a litmus test to see if or not China operates in the international system as a ¡§responsible stakeholder¡¨ as it expects. Because of compound issues involved in the issue(proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, nuclear armament domino effect in North East Asia, and the miserable living conditions and humanitarian crisis in North Korea), the real mindset of China¡¦s position on dealing with it which is top on its national interest calculations could be clearly read. Moreover, North Korea stands as a buffer state in the North East Asia, its collapsing and integration with South Korea means a lot to the great powers---China is the immediate benefactor in this matter. That¡¦s why China has been voicing its concern on the basing relocation and military interoperability exercises among the United States, Japan, and South Korea. Then, the discourse, or authenticity, of ¡§peaceful development¡¨ will be given credence to or not. Given the scenario, the thesis is focused on studying the policy of China on dealing with North Korea nuclear dispute and its impacts on the Northeast Asia, trying to understand and figure out the real face of China¡¦s strategic ambitions.

abstract: The People's Republic of China's inexorable ascendancy has become an epochal event in international landscape, accentuated by its triple national ceremonies of global significance: 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, 2009 Beijing Military Parade, and 2010 Shanghai World Expo. At a momentous juncture when the PRC endeavored to project a new national identity to the outside world, these ceremonial occasions constitute a high-stake communicative opportunity for the Chinese government and a fruitful set of discursive artifacts for symbolic deconstruction and rhetorical interpretation. To unravel these ceremonial spectacles, a public memory approach, with its versatile potencies indexical of a nation's interpretive system of social meaning, its normative framework of ideological model, and its past-present-future interrelationships, is contextually, conceptually, and analytically diagnostic of a rising China's sociopolitical constellations. Thus employing public memory as a conceptual-methodological matrix, my dissertation focuses on the prominent texts in these ceremonies, excavates their historico-memorial invocation and sociocultural persuasion, and plumbs their discursive agenda, rhetorical operation, and sociopolitical implication. I argue that the Chinese government deliberately and forcefully strove for three interrelated communicative objectives at these three ceremonies--re-imaging, re-asserting, and re-anchoring its national identity as an ancient, emergent superpower. Yet in contemporary Chinese context, its discursive (con)quest to recast its leadership as a historically continuous, culturally orthodox, and ideologically legitimate regime has always been compromised by its mythologized historical representation and hegemonic rhetorical reconfiguration, countervailed by its political and ideological fragility, and contested by domestic and global publics. Besides its contributions to the current conversation on the PRC's ceremonial phenomena, discursive formations, and communicative dynamics, this dissertation further offers its diagnosis and prognostication of this projected leading country in the 21st century. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Communication Studies 2012

歷經第二次伊拉克戰爭與經濟危機，冷戰後主導世界秩序的支配強權－美國國力遭受打擊，進而出現美國衰落的論述；同一時期，太平洋另一端新興大國—中國藉由快速的經濟發展在世界舞台展露頭角。因應此國際情勢而生的「權力轉移理論」便是探討既存支配強權與新興崛起挑戰者間權力轉移過程的理論。權力轉移論者認為，當新興挑戰國的能力增強至足以與既存支配強權匹配時，若同時其對現狀滿意度越來越低，便可能觸發戰爭。然而，國際政治受各區域國家所牽動，兩強間分庭抗禮且須考量區域中舉足輕重的領導國家。傳統上拉丁美洲被視為美國後院，而中國對該區域各國互動密切，更有論者提出中國直搗美國後院一說。綜觀拉美各國，其中擁有豐富天然資源、作為美洲第二大經濟體的巴西，是首屈一指的區域領導國家。是而本研究以巴西為舞台，從美國－巴西互動、中國－巴西互動，討論新興大國中國與既存支配強權美國間權力轉移的過程，從三方來往間探討權力轉移的跡象並驗證權力轉移論者的主張與假設，另外，本研究嘗試補充權力轉移論者中較少著墨的第三國－區域領導國家，在既存、新興兩強發生權力轉移時所扮演的角色與考量。 / After 2003 Iraq War and financial crisis, the power of dominator, United States is on the way fading. Meanwhile, on the other side of the pacific comes an emerging challenger -China. U.S. decline and China rise complete power transition theory as to illustrate the process of dynamic power change between dominated country and potential challenger. Power transition theory discusses that the war along with power shifting from dominanted state to potential challenger may explore while fulfilling two variables, power parity as the opportunity and negative evaluations of the status quo as the willingness. However, the world politics is well effected by regional countries even on the interactions between two major agents in power transition. Latin America is traditionally regarded as “backyard” of the U.S. but with increased cooperation from China, this claim has been slack. Among all countries in Latin America, Brazil devotees in leading the region due to its rich natural resources and political-economic influence. This article focuses on Brazil and imply competitions between the U.S. and China on the interactions with Brazil so to discuss the power transition phenomena and relevant hypothesis verifications. Furthermore, it tends to develop the autonomy and active position of third state while participating in power transition.

This dissertation aims to discover the hidden pattern and rationales behind China's South China Sea policies over the last one hundred years from the perspective of Chinese strategic culture. A historical-cultural approach is a powerful tool in uncovering deeper understandings of the Chinese way of policy making and strategy on issues such as the South China Sea. The key research questions include: first, is there any historical legitimacy in China's sovereignty claim over the South China Sea islands? Second, do Beijing's South China Sea policies in various periods have any regularity or pattern, and how did they serve China's grand strategies at the time? By utilizing extensive Chinese and English primary sources and other sources, this study conducts a comprehensive and in-depth analysis of the South China Sea issue from the framework of Chinese strategic culture.