Dr Chun Lin

This course is available on the MSc in China in Comparative Perspective, MSc in Comparative Politics and MSc in Global Politics. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

Entry to this course may be restricted.

Contemporary contradictions of socioeconomic and political transformations of China since 1949 and especially 1978; their rival explanations and interpretations: Often in comparison with other postcommunist transitions, other Asian states and other national developing trajectories, our discussions will cover the evolving historical, international and geopolitical contexts of China's development, its social and political demography; state power at all levels of governance, central-local relations, and semi-federalism; bureaucracy as tradition and as invention; political economy and market transition as global integration; social structure and organisation; class, ethnic, and gender relations; ideology, cultural politics, and issues concerning democracy and legitimacy; nationalism, “one country, two systems”, the Taiwan question; and China’s military, security, and changing foreign policy and global position. Students are expected to gain extensive historical and empirical knowledge about the PRC and be capable of tackling related conceptual and theoretical questions.

10 hours of lectures and 15 hours of seminars in the LT.

This course is offered in LT, constituting 10 teaching weeks and one reading week (week 6 of the LT) for essay and learning support activities.  

Students are required to give at least one seminar presentation, and to write one 1,500 word essay.

M Meisner, The Deng Era (1996); J Gray, Rebellions and Revolutions (2003); C Bramall, Chinese Economic Development (2008); CK Lee, Against the Law (2007); W Sun and Y Guo, Unequal China (2013); W Tang, Populist Authoritarianism (2016); K Brown, China's World (2017).

Essay (100%, 4000 words).