The short-lived proclamations, published by a mix of 13 big-city newspapers, financial publications and regional dailies, were a coordinated act of bravado.

The short-lived proclamations, published by a mix of 13 big-city newspapers, financial publications and regional dailies, were a coordinated act of bravado on an issue that has bedeviled the Communist Party since Mao established the hukou system to prevent famine-stricken peasants from flooding the wealthier cities. The system, though much relaxed in recent years, ties people to their parents’ hometown, where their birth has to be registered. Many government services, like schooling and police protection, are tied to people’s hukou, and the rules for shifting a hukou from one place to another are highly restrictive. Despite the rules, hundreds of millions of the rural poor have migrated to cities to build the highways and office towers that have transformed China. But they do not have the same rights as local residents, and they have difficulty putting their children in schools or getting medical care. If they lose their jobs, the police often pressure them to return to their hometowns. The educated and the rich have found ways to circumvent the restrictions. An advanced degree can lead to a coveted urban permit. When all else fails, a large sum of cash in the right pocket will do the trick. The problem was highlighted last month in Beijing when education officials announced that 30 “unauthorized” schools serving about 20,000 migrant children would have to give way for redevelopment. Experts estimate that as many as 250,000 children born in the capital in recent years have no legal right to a public education

Chinese Editorials Assail a Government SystemBy ANDREW JACOBSPublished: March 1, 2010

this map shows the geographic distribution of cities. It clearly shows that cities are concentrated in Europe, the eastern United States, Japan, China and India. It is a better map for showing the geography of night time electricity consumption for outdoor lighting than it is for showing the geography of population. For example: the eastern United States is very bright but the more densely populated areas of China and India are not nearly as bright in this image. NASA Image.

Japan stands out on this satellite view of Asia at night, along with the west coast of Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Bangkok. The route of the Trans-Siberian Railroad can be seen as a light line across the otherwise dark area of northern Russia. High city densities in eastern China, Indonesia, India and the eastern coast of Australia can clearly be seen. NASA Image

Cleavages in China: Women

China faces growing sex imbalance

More than 24 million Chinese men of marrying age could find themselves without spouses by 2020, says the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

BBC Jan 11, 2010 The gender imbalance among newborns is the most serious demographic problem for the country's population of 1.3 billion, says the academy. It cites sex-specific abortions as a major factor, due to China's traditional bias towards male children. The academy says gender selection abortions are "extremely common". This is especially true in rural areas, and ultra-sound scans, first introduced in the late 1980s, have increased the practice

The Han Chinese make up over 92% of the population of China, which is also home to 55 other official ethnic groups.

Ethnic groups in China

Deep in China, a Poor and Pious Muslim Enclave NYT March 19, 2006

Tie Yongxiang and his wife, right, are members of an ethnic minority, the Dongxiang, in China.

Members of the Dongxiang ethnic group, like this family, have lived in northern China for 800 years and have their own language and customs.

•The death penalty is now aimed at separatists as well as drug criminals, Amnesty says

•Uighurs are ethnically different from the Han Chinese and speak a Turkic language. They were once the majority in Xinjiang, but now they make up less than half the population. •The parallels with Buddhist Tibet are striking. China keeps an iron grip on both. •"China regards Xinjiang in the same way that it regards Tibet as having always been part of China, and it will quote historical facts going back thousands of years," said Professor Mike Dillon from Durham University in Britain. •"The reality is that both Xinjiang and Tibet were only brought into the Chinese empire in the form that they are now, in the late 18th Century, but nevertheless, they are regarded as a part of China. •"The Chinese regard any talk of separatism as a kind of national betrayal, and they're not prepared to countenance it."

Cleavages: separatist movements

Uighurs in Xinjiang province

Ethnically Turkic Muslims, mainly in Xinjiang

Made bid for independent state in 1940s

Sporadic violence in Xinjiang

since 1991

Uighurs worried about Chinese immigration and erosion of traditional culture

The Dead Tell a Tale China Doesn’t Care to Listen To

The Loulan Beauty is one of more than 200 remarkably well-preserved mummies discovered in the western deserts here over the last few decades. The ancient bodies have become protagonists in a very contemporary political dispute over who should control the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. The Chinese authorities here face an intermittent separatist movement of nationalist Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim people who number nine million in Xinjiang.At the heart of the matter lie these questions: Who first settled this inhospitable part of western China? And for how long has the oil-rich region been part of the Chinese empire?

Wary of Islam, China Tightens Rules

Khotan’s mosque draws thousands of Muslims

each week. In Kashgar, Uighurs prepared to break

their daily fast during Ramadan last month.

People’s Liberation Army political poster in a town in Xinjiang, China,

a region largely inhabited by Uighurs, an ethnic group uneasy

with the government’s rule.

How China deals with cleavages:

Co-optation: Different rules regarding rights:(e.g. release from one child policy, the right to retain certain marriage patterns and traditions of conducting one's sexual life; and the right to engage in various forms of religious practices which are otherwise considered "superstitious“)

Constitution grants autonomous areas right of self-government in certain areas like cultural affairs (e.g. local decisions on education, finances, culture and religion) though in reality very limited

“reserves seats” for ethnic minorities in the N P(eople’s) C

“celebrate” differences

Move in ethnic Han

Rules which restrict religions

Force and executions for separatists

The rioting broke out Sunday afternoon in a large market area and lasted for several hours before riot police officers and paramilitary or military troops

locked down the Uighur quarter of the city, according to witnesses and photographs of the riot.

The riot was the largest ethnic clash in China since the Tibetan uprising of March 2008. Like the Tibetan unrest, it highlighted the deep-seated

frustrations felt by some ethnic minorities in western China over the policies of the Communist Party.

At least 1,000 rioters took to the streets, stoning the police and setting vehicles on fire. A boy stood amid the burnt

wreckage of a bus and shopping stalls in a street in Urumqi.

Chinese soldiers marched on the streets of Urumqi in China's western Xinjiang province on

Wednesday

Jul 2009 Riot police patrolled a street in the regional capital in China's Xinjiang province on Monday. The Chinese state news agency reported that 156 people were killed and more than 800 injured when rioters clashed with

the police in Urumqi, in far western China

Aug 2008 Chinese police officers spoke to foreigners as they patrolled the area where an attack on a military police unit killed 16 officers in Kashgar in China's far northwest.

Whatever led to the attack raised questions about the viability of Chinese policy in Xinjiang, even as China sought to promote an image of a "harmonious society" for the Olympics

Rural Urban cleavagesPolice turn water cannon on rural protest in China

Jonathan WattsFriday April 14, 2006The Guardian

Thousands of Chinese villagers have clashed with police over access to irrigation water, leading to at least one death and five injuries, the local media reported yesterday. Amid a rise in violent rural unrest, the authorities used water cannon and tear gas to break up an angry protest in the village of Bomei the southern province of Guangdong. According to the South China Morning Post, the villagers used homemade weapons, including petrol bombs, to keep more than 1,000 police officers from tearing down a sluice gate they had built in September to divert water to their fields

Chinese farmers in the Nanjing area carrying their harvest in October. Most of the people in the country's rural areas, home to much of China's population, have been left behind by the country's recent economic boom

Celebrate Differences

Nearly 190,000 dancers, politicians, soldiers and fighter pilots prepared for the highly synchronized extravaganza. Children waited to perform in Tiananmen Square.

China’s Han Flock to Theme Parks Featuring Minorities

Chinese tourists splashed at Dai Minority Park in Manzha

Tucked away in China’s steamy tropical southwest are the villages of the Dai people, famous throughout the country for a raucous annual tradition: a water-splashing festival where the Dai douse one another for three days in the streets using any container they can get their hands on — buckets, wash basins, teacups, balloons, water guns. But in Manzha and four surrounding villages, the springtime festival has taken on added significance — or insignificance, depending on how you look at it. Imagine a nonstop Mardi Gras with fire hoses: at a site called the Dai Minority Park, water-splashing extravaganzas take place every day.

The Dai park, with its wooden stilt homes, groomed palm trees and elephant statues, is part of an increasingly popular form of entertainment in China — the ethnic theme playground, where middle-class Han come to experience what they consider the most exotic elements of their vast nation. There is no comprehensive count of these Disneyland-like parks, but people in the industry say the number is growing, as are visitors. The Dai park, whose grounds encompass 333 actual Dai households, attracts a half-million tourists a year paying $15 each.The parks are money-making ventures. But scholars say they also serve a political purpose — to reinforce the idea that the Chinese nation encompasses 55 fixed ethnic minorities and their territories, all ruled by the Han.“They’re one piece in the puzzle of the larger project of how China wants to represent itself as a multiethnic state,” said Thomas S. Mullaney, a historian at Stanford University who studies China’s ethnic taxonomy. “The end goal is political, which is territorial unity. Parks like that, even if they’re kitschy, kind of like Legoland, they still play and occupy a political position.”China’s 1.3 billion people are officially 96 percent Han; the rest range from Tibetans to Naxi to Manchus, categories fixed after the 1949 Communist revolution. The companies running the parks are generally Han-owned, say industry workers. The Dai park was started by a Han businessman from Guangdong Province in the late 1990s and sold to a state-run rubber company in 1999.

The most famous park, the Nationalities Park in Beijing, is a combination of museum and fairground. Ethnic workers from across China dress up in their native costumes for mostly Han tourists. (For a while, English signs there read “Racist Park,” an unfortunate translation of the Chinese name.) In some parks, Han workers dress up as natives — a practice given legitimacy by the government when Han children marched out in the costumes of the 55 minorities during the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics

More posters/campaigns Natalie Behring for The New York Times

At the Lanxi Middle School in Anxi, a billboard reminds boys of a campaign to respect girls. To help stop sex-selection abortions, meanwhile, the government is providing aid to families with one daughter or more.

IV. Citizens, Society, and the State

Ultimately, politics hinges on the interactions between state and society. Therefore, the course should not be confined to the internal workings or the institutional underpinnings of states. Through country cases, students can learn how certain kinds of cleavages such as ethnicity, religion, or class become politically relevant. Some regimes like China and Iran have formal arrangements for representing social groups such as ethnic or religious minorities. A country’s political patterns are influenced by the characteristics and demands of its population. Institutions can blunt or exacerbate cleavages in society. The countries studied in this course provide ample evidence for pursuing questions about how states manage and respond to deeply held divisions among their citizens.

A minority delegate in traditional Mongolian dress on Monday addressed Wu Bangguo, the

chairman of China’s parliament, the National People’s Congress.

China Has Sentenced 55 Over Tibet Riot in March

The Chinese government has actively encouraged Han migration to ethnic minority regions in western China, particularly Tibet and Xinjiang, and that in turn has led to rising tensions between locals and the Han settlers who come seeking jobs and business opportunities. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/06/world/asia/06tibet.html?ref=world

How does China deal with cleavages?

Curbs on Protest in Tibet Lashed by Dalai Lama

The Dalai Lama accused China of “cultural genocide.”

Meng Huizhong expressed anger at what she saw as lax government response to Tibet unrest

Chinese Nationalism Fuels Tibet Crackdown

China Bans Mosque Meetings in Strife-

Torn Region

To be a practicing Muslim in the vast autonomous region of northwestern China called Xinjiang is to live under an intricate series of laws and regulations intended to control the spread and practice of Islam, the predominant religion among the Uighurs, a Turkic people uneasy with Chinese rule. The edicts touch on every facet of a Muslim’s way of life. Official versions of the Koran are the only legal ones. Imams may not teach the Koran in private, and studying Arabic is allowed only at special government schools. Two of Islam’s five pillars — the sacred fasting month of Ramadan and the pilgrimage to Mecca called the hajj — are also carefully controlled. Students and government workers are compelled to eat during Ramadan, and the passports of Uighurs have been confiscated across Xinjiang to force them to join government-run hajj tours rather than travel illegally to Mecca on their own.

Government workers are not permitted to practice Islam, which means the slightest sign of devotion, a head scarf on a woman, for example, could lead to a firing. The Chinese government, which is officially atheist, recognizes five religions — Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Taoism and Buddhism — and tightly regulates their administration and practice. Its oversight in Xinjiang, though, is especially vigilant because it worries about separatist activity in the region.

Jan 2009 The Chinese government in Uighur region has restored text messaging services, more than six months after violent unrest in Urumqi.

Text messages, as well as Internet access and international phone calls, were cut after 197 people died in protests between Uighurs and Han Chinese on July 5. However, Uighur exile groups said up to 800 people died, many of them Uighurs shot or beaten to death by police.

Messaging services were restored in the early hours of Sunday morning, residents said.

"Hello, uncle. In Xinjiang we can send text messages now. I hope you are well," read a message sent by one Urumqi resident, Sun Yu, to his relative in Beijing.

China named what Uighurs call East Turkistan "Xinjiang" after imposing its control.

China says restores text messages in Uighur region

Hong Kong was a Crown colony of the United Kingdom from 1842 (hmmm what happened then?) until the transfer of sovereignty to the People's Republic of China in 1997. It operates under China's “one country-two systems” policy

Macao: Administered by Portugal until 1999, it was the oldest European colony in China, dating back to the 16th century (ah yes, the Iberian Cnetury). The administrative power over Macau was transferred to the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1999, and it is now one of two special administrative regions of the PRC, together with Hong Kong.

Hong Kong “One Country; Two Systems”

BEIJING, Thursday, May 4 — Taiwan's president, Chen Shui-bian, delayed an overseas trip at the last minute on Wednesday after the United States denied him permission to stop overnight on American soil, a diplomatic setback for the independence-leaning Taiwanese leader.The rebuke suggests that the Bush administration remains displeased by Mr. Chen's move in February to abolish a government agency set up to study reunification with mainland China. The United States is also eager to avoid antagonizing China after some embarrassing incidents during a visit by its president, Hu Jintao, late last month.Bush administration officials need China's cooperation to curtail Iran's nuclear program, and its willingness to follow the American lead on such issues often depends on whether it perceives the United States as helping to check Taiwan's independence drive.

U.S. Says No to Overnight Stay for Taiwanese Leader May 4, 2006

December 30, 2007

China Will Make Hong Kong Wait to Elect Leader

By DONALD GREENLEES and KEITH BRADSHER

HONG KONG — Chinese officials announced Saturday that Hong Kong would have to wait at least another decade for democratic elections to select its leader, and for more than 12 years to have the right to directly elect the entire legislature.The decision is the latest in a series of setbacks for the democracy aspirations of Hong Kong residents, and another sign that Beijing’s current leaders have scant appetite for experimenting with greater public participation in political decision-making.The Basic Law, the mini-Constitution imposed by China on Hong Kong after Britain returned the city to Chinese rule in 1997, raises the prospect of choosing Hong Kong leaders starting in 2007 by the principle of one person, one vote. But having already decided in 2004 to postpone universal suffrage until at least 2012, Beijing’s leaders took the next step on Saturday of postponing action for at least five years after that.

Rice Has Sharp Words for Taiwan, as Gates Does for China December 22, 2007

WASHINGTON — Senior administration officials sharply criticized China and Taiwan on Friday, saying they were inflaming tensions with each other and with the United States.Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice issued an unusually sharp rebuke to Taiwan, pointedly calling its planned referendum on United Nations membership “provocative.”At the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates dismissed as “specious” an explanation from China that it had recently declined port visits by American warships because Mr. Gates had not told officials in Beijing of planned arms sales to Taiwan.

President Chen Shui-bian of Taiwan displayed in Taipei yesterday the official document by which he scrapped the National Unification Council and the guidelines for unification with mainland China.

Beijing Accuses Taiwan Leader of 'Grave Provocation'March 1, 2006

President Hu Jintao, left, and former President Jiang Zemin, center, attended a banquet marking the anniversary. Wen Jiabao, the prime

minister, addressed the banquet, pledging China's commitment to global economic recovery.

Thousands of soldiers and rows of tanks commemorated 60 years of Communist Party rule during National Day celebrations in Beijing. Female officers and soldiers of the People's Liberation Army marched during the military parade

The anniversary party's overarching theme echoed the words Mao spoke after forcing the Nationalists to surrender Beijing in 1949. "Ours will no longer be a nation subject to insult and humiliation," Mao said. "We have stood up." People's Liberation Army naval

officers marched past Tiananmen Square.

People's Liberation Army soldiers marched down Changan Avenue

prior to the military parade

People's Liberation Army soldiers marched past Tiananmen Square.

From the displays of advanced weaponry to the celebration posters highlighting Shanghai's forest of skyscrapers, the unmistakable message of the celebration was that Mao was right and that the

Communist Party is carrying all China to prosperity and worldwide respect.

China's leaders and spectators waited at Tiananmen Gate before the start of the parade. The gate, known as the Gate of Heavenly Peace, is where Mao declared the Communist

Party's victory in 1949.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/country_profiles/1288392.stm

Timeline: China

A chronology of key events:

Review it all

Globalization describes the way international economic, social, cultural and technological forces are affecting what goes on within an individual country Hauss

Globalization: the intensification of worldwide interconnectedness associated with the increased speed and magnitude of cross-boarder flows of trade, investment and finance, and process of migration, cultural diffusion and communication; Kessleman

Globalization: the growing economic interdependence of countries worldwide through increasing volume and variety of cross-border transactions in goods and services, freer international capital flows, and more rapid and widespread diffusion of technology” (IMF, World Economic Outlook, May, 1997).

Globalization is the term used to describe the changes in societies and the world economy that result from dramatically increased international trade. It describes the increase of trade and investing due to the falling of barriers and the interdependence of countries. In specifically economic contexts, the term refers almost exclusively to the effects of trade, particularly trade liberalization or “free trade.” More broadly, the term refers to the overall integration, and resulting increase in interdependence, among global actors (be they political, economic, or otherwise).It shares a number of characteristics with internationalization and is often used interchangeably, although some prefer to use globalization to emphasize the erosion of the nation-state or national boundaries. The Evil Wickepedia

August 2008 A member of the security forces directed journalists and locals away from the area where an attack on a military police unit killed 16 officers in Kashgar in China's far northwest.

China's Generation Me: shopaholic, pleasure-seeking players mesmerized by their own reflections.

A 14-month-old boy was treated last week at a hospital in Chengdu, China,

after drinking tainted milk formula