This thesis examines the role of the Chinese news media in the 1989 pro-democracy movement. The three functions of this thesis are: 1) to provide evidence of changes in the pro-democracy movement; 2) to identify corresponding changes in the press coverage of the movement; 3) to examine what relationship exists between changes in the movement and changes in the press coverage of the movement.

This senior thesis is an exploration of Chinese soft power and the implications on the future of US-China relations. The first chapter looks into the objectives/goals to attain by using soft power set by the Chinese government followed by the exploration of methods that the Chinese have used to further their goals. The second chapter takes a look at the implicit and explicit successes of soft power in the peripheral regions of China and neighboring countries. The third chapter explores the negative and positive results that have come from China's soft power efforts. And the final chapter covers the fluctuation in American soft power and the effect China's soft power will have on global stability. The paper concludes with policy suggestions for the United States if it wants to protect national interests against China's soft power in the future.

The Chinese education issues in Malaysia appear frequently in political discourse, often featuring contentious discussions of language learning and national education policies. Applying an historical approach to contextualize a political discourse, this thesis examines the politics and transformation of Malaysian Chinese education, in microcosm, at the level of a renowned Chinese school, Chung Ling High School in Penang. It explores and maps the question of "Chineseness" through the examination of the history and development of Chung Ling since its establishment in 1917. This thesis also aims to elucidate the complex negotiation between multiple stakeholders of the Chinese community which took place at different historical junctures in a postcolonial and multi-ethnic nation. I discuss memorial activities for two deceased educationists, David Chen and Lim Lian Geok, which have been readapted into contemporary discourse by different factions of educationists to express their dissatisfactions toward state hegemony on education policies. Lastly, I argue that the persistent pursuit of "Chineseness" is counterproductive to the aim of safeguarding interests of Chinese schools within and outside the national education system today.

Cette thèse propose d’analyser l’émergence de la contre-culture en République Populaire de Chine à travers le prisme de la contestation politique, à partir des productions culturelles et d’enquêtes menées dans plusieurs villes chinoises de 2012 à 2015. Deux communautés contre-culturelles ont été étudiées durant la thèse, celles des punks et des cinéastes indépendants. Ce choix permet de révéler des logiques similaires au sein de ces deux communautés concernant leur rapport au politique et aux espaces qu’ils ont créés, dans un État qui contrôle encore fermement l’expression culturelle. La contre-culture chinoise doit être tout d’abord replacée dans le contexte de la gestion, par le Parti communiste, de toute forme d’expression culturelle, et ce depuis les thèses de Qu Qiubai et du Discours sur la littérature et l’art de Mao Zedong. Punks et cinéastes indépendants se placent ainsi dans l’histoire de la résistance des artistes et des intellectuels à la mainmise des autorités chinoises sur le domaine culturel, et trouvent de nouveaux moyens d’exprimer leurs désaccords à travers l’appropriation mineure de techniques qui sont à leur disposition. La thèse propose ainsi d’étudier ces deux formes de contre-culture à travers les effets qu’elles produisent sur les acteurs eux-mêmes, mais également dans la recherche d’espaces autonomes, qui symbolisent la lutte contre la monopolisation de l’espace public par le Parti communiste chinois. L’analyse abordera également l’expression contre-culturelle comme une forme du discours de vérité (parrêsia), dans une société où, selon Liu Xiaobo, « refuser le mensonge constitue précisément la force la plus efficace pour saper la tyrannie ». / His thesis offers a study of the emergence of counter-culture in the People’s Republic of China through the lens of political contestation, with the help of cultural productions and a fieldwork carried on in several Chinese cities from 2012 to 2015. Two counter-cultural communities have been studied in this thesis, the punks and the independent filmmakers. This choice allows us to reveal similar logics within these two communities about their relationship to politics and to the spaces they have been able to create in order to produce and release their works, in a State which still tightly controls cultural expression. Chinese counter-culture must first be put back into the context of the management, by the Communist Party, of all forms of cultural expression, from Qu Qiubai’s theories to Mao Zedong’s Talks about literature and art. Punks and independent filmmakers thus place themselves into the history of artists and intellectuals’ resistance against the control by Chinese authorities of the cultural field. They find new tools in order to express their disagreements, through the minor appropriation of available techniques. The thesis proposes to study this two forms of counter-culture through the effects they produce on the actors themselves, through the new forms of subjectivity they create, but also through the search of autonomous spaces, which embodies the struggle against the Chinese Communist Party’s monopoly of public space. The analysis will also address the counter-cultural expression as a kind of speech of truth (parrhesia), in a society where, according to Liu Xiaobo, “to refuse lies is precisely the most effective way to undermine tyranny”.

Er’rentai, or Mongolian dance and song duets, is a genre of folk opera in the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region. Er’rentai performances can be categorized into two styles—the “western-style” and the “eastern-style.” The aim of this thesis is to explore the acculturation in Chinese-Mongolian er’rentai genre in the following ways. First, I address the historical background of the western-style er’rentai. Then, I draw on fieldwork with Huo Banzhu, a famous er’rentai musician, to introduce contemporary state of er’rentai's development. Finally, I employ musical analysis to demonstrate the borrowings of Mongolian music and culture in the formation and transmission of Chinese-Mongolian er’rentai.

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine how the People’s Republic of China has used domestic and foreign policy to achieve and maintain food security. This is a formidable task for the PRC given that it has 20% of the world’s population and only 7% of its arable land. It has been made more formidable by domestic policy errors and its changing position within the international system. The PRC has evolved from a Marxist revisionist state to one that mixes state capitalism and free enterprise and has become a combination of revisionist and status quo. Such changes lend themselves to process-tracing as a methodology in order to reveal the rationale behind the change and the resulting impact on food security. To capture this evolution, a food paradigm is constructed for various eras that reflect domestic influences on food security. To this is added the international aspect; the choice of what countries it would or could trade with, as needed. Together the domestic and international are combined to obtain a complete view of the food paradigm and resulting food security situation for each era. In pursuing food security this dissertation will focus on rice, wheat, soybeans, and maize, the prime grains for human consumption and animal feed in the PRC. These grains provide much of the caloric intake of the population as well as being the prime reserve products. The results show that these products have been used as a tool of foreign policy to reward or punish other states by adjusting their imports and exports to send political messages as seen fit. The PRC has always maintained a diversified import supply base, but as imports have continued to grow, the supply base is expanding. Expansion is not through land-grabbing but by contract growing by local farmers in less developed countries and leasing land in developed countries, both on previously uncultivated lands. Simultaneously, there are efforts to improve grain production in African countries, among others. Increasing output there will increase total world supply, an indirect benefit to the PRC food security and to its image abroad.

The problem investigated in this thesis is the history of the Stilwell Road, from its beginning in 1920, as the old Burma Road, to its completion, re-naming, use in 1945, and death in 1946 . The study of this problem justifies itself for various reasons, namely: (1) The Stilwell Road was severely needed by China as the only thoroughfare to the outside world. Chinese needs were of morale , equipment and arms- both large and small, and the training and advisory leadership of existing man-power. China having stood alone against the Japanese since 1937 needed the psychological boost that was given by the Road--the thought that someone strong still stood at her side to see her through . Without the Road, it would have been impossible to transport to China the large amounts of arms , equipment and supplies that found their way into the country. How well these supplies were used is a question for dispute, but it is known that with American supervision in distribution, the Chinese did receive some of the tools to put up a greater struggle to free themselves from the Japanese.

This thesis introduces China's contemporary history especially the period 1949-1976 based on the analysis of selected British and American historiography. Through the criticism and comparison of British and American scholars' discourse, this thesis will obtain a deeper understanding of China's history. This thesis regards Mao Zedong as the main China's historical figure, as well as the construction of new China as the main line of writing. So the position of Mao and the Chinese Communist Party during the period of the construction of new China is an important part to discuss in this thesis. The thesis mainly talks about the period 1949-76 of China from the perspective of political and economic policies and movements, international relations, social issues, military actions and cultural movements. In addition, this thesis also emphasizes on discussing the angles, methodology and terminology of British and American historiography on China's contemporary history.

The chapter “Regulations of a King” 王制 illustrates a new pragmatic form of governance through morality around five issues. First, the chapter practically discusses three modes of statecraft, detailing which mode of statecraft is most effective and why. Next, it discusses the importance of the existence of law fa 法. Third, it transforms the concept of ritual as a tool of governance and an extension of law. Fourth, it describes rewards and punishments as political tools to reinforce an educational and transformational program for moral quality. Finally, it discusses perhaps the most unique tool of governance, definitive judgment lei 類. Through the examination of these five issues in “Regulations of a King”, I intend to show that the chapter “Regulations of a King” illustrates a new pragmatic form of governance through morality by displaying a more practical style of rhetoric and political tools for effective administering of a state.

More than a decade has passed since the United States Supreme Court made its historic decision in Lau v. Nichols on January 21, 1974. Ruling in favor of the non-English-speaking Chinese plaintiffs, the Court upheld earlier guidelines established by the office for Civil Rights for school districts with more than five percent national origin-minority group children. In delivering the Court's opinion, Justice Douglas reiterated these words of J. Stanley Pottinger, former director of OCR: