Columbia University Press

In honor of the recent publication in paperback of Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali Zamindar’s book The Long Partition and the Making of Modern South Asia, we re-post here an interview with the author on the 60th anniversary of the partition of the Indian subcontinent which took place August 14-15, 1947.

Here the author explains what the title of Long Partition means:

By the long partition my purpose is to emphasize that 1947 was only the beginning of what was necessarily a long, drawn-out process of dividing a territory and its people into two distinct nation-states. Although there has been a lot of argument over why partition took place, we have not paid enough attention to understanding the historical process of partitioning itself.

We’ve posted the introduction to the book here if you would like to read more.

In a recent interview posted on the Northwestern University website, Living with the Dragon: How the American Public Views the Rise of China co-author Benjamin I. Page, a professor at Northwestern, explains how Americans perceive the rise of China as a world power. Here he answers the question of what is the greatest threat to U.S.-China relations:

The greatest threat is Taiwan. The status quo is probably OK but that is the strange situation in which the U.S. claims that there is a one-China policy, but at the same time gives military aid to Taiwan. But as long as Taiwan doesn’t try to be independent, that’s stable. The biggest single danger is that at some point, which almost happened a short time ago, the Taiwanese might have a government that insists on independence and that could lead to a major struggle that the U.S. could get dragged into.

If you’d like to read more about this book, check out the excerpt from the first chapter posted on our website.

In a recent guest post on Frog In A Well John Major, one of the translators of the recently published Huainanzi, a classic Han dynasty work on statecraft and philosophy, talks about the process and difficulties of translation.

One of the more unusual aspects of the translation of this work was the highly collaborative team effort the translators took. Here, Major talks about how they approached it:

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Donald Keene’s recently published So Lovely a Country Will Never Perish: Wartime Diaries of Japanese Writers represents the latest in the scholar’s influential oeuvre in Japanese literature and culture.

In the book, Keene weaves archival materials together with personal reflections and the intimate accounts from writers’ diaries to produce an entirely original portrait of Japanese wartime attitudes. Writers included in the book include Nagai Kafu, Takami Jun, Ito Sei, Hirabayashi Taiko, Yamada Futaro, and the scholar Watanabe Kazuo.

Last Fall, the Japan Times taped an interview with Donald Keene on a variety of issues. Here are some excerpts, the first of which is his response to a question about his first impressions of Japan:

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In an interesting article for Yale Global, Guobin Yang, author of The Power of the Internet in China: Citizen Activism Online, downplays some of the hyperbole that has been used to characterize the dispute between Google and China.

Yang argues that what has been most affected has been China’s image and not so much Chinese access to the Internet. Yang writes:

Because many Google services are still available, Google’s move has not significantly affected mainland internet users. Survey findings published in the February 2010 issue of Nature show that Chinese academic communities rely heavily on such services as Google Scholar, and the site remains available under the Google.cn domain name (scholar.google.cn/schhp?hl=zh-CN). Although Google has not published data on access from mainland users to previously censored content such as the Tiananmen protests of 1989, do not expect to see major changes in Chinese netizens’ online search behavior. Like internet users elsewhere, the average Chinese user is more likely to seek entertainment rather than politics online. Those searching for political content know how to scale the fire walls.

He goes on to suggest that the Chinese government’s policy toward Google is more or less in line with those of ordinary Chinese in the sense that they both share a gradualist approach to change:

However passionate Chinese citizens are for free speech or broader political change, nowadays people are more likely to favor a gradualist approach. Chinese intellectuals wholeheartedly embraced Western-style democracy in the 1980s. They have since become less sure of themselves or a Western system transplanted to Chinese soil, not the least because they have seen troubles inside even the strongest Western democracies. Still critical of authoritarianism, they have no clear vision, or confidence, of a workable solution to the political challenges facing China today. The rise of a strong public discourse of civil society in China, rather than strident calls for democracy, reflects this intellectual dilemma. Building a civil society is at least a useful first step. Despite the political control of the internet, a vibrant current of online activism has surged for years.

As Alexis Dudden points out in her fascinating article in Japan Focus, 2010 marks the 100th anniversary of Japan’s takeover of Korea. Dudden, author of Troubled Apologies Among Japan, Korea, and the United States, reveals the ways in which this event and the history of the complicated relationship between Japan and Korea continues to play a part in East Asian relations.

Incidents such as Japan’s enslavement of women during World War II, its program to forcibly remove Koreans from Japan from 1959-1984, and continuing resentment toward Korea and Koreans evidenced by the nationalist Zaitokukai movement along with Japan’s school curriculum continue to color relations between the two nations. Japan also sees itself as victimized by the abduction of Japanese citizens by North Korea. Dudden writes:

This, of course, is the deep divide between Japan and its Asian neighbors that Japan’s political and business leaders have long chosen to ignore in charting the nation’s place in the region. In simplest terms, [Japan's] abduction story failed to impress Asians because of the still oozing human wounds of empire, war, and decades of official denial. Japan found itself isolated because of its deep and deeply-layered history with stolen bodies, giving it no choice but to take the abduction story to Washington…. Championing Japan’s stance on the abduction matter against North Korea continues of course to necessitate Washington’s ignoring the region’s disinterest in the story, which of course only makes sense to a United States complicit in sustaining Japan’s official silence on pre-1945 history as the deep structure of America’s post-1945 use of Japan, its soil, its people, its wealth.

More recently, Japan’s dispute with Korea over a group of islands (“Takeshima” to the Japanese and “Dokdo” to the Koreans) has led to another spurt of Japanese nationalism one that Dudden suggests the region needs to be wary of:

The extremists’ numbers are small, yet when helmeted police spend public money to protect democratically elected officials who agree with them over a common cause — “Takeshima is Japan’s!” — things are openly out of sorts in Japan today and, arguably, dangerously so.

In an interview with Time, Jonathan Holslag, author of China and India: Prospects for Peace discusses some of the existing and potential tensions conflicts that might develop between the two countries.

Holslag argues that increased competition between the nations might lead to conflict. More precisely, he suggests that as India industrializes it will challenge China’s core economic strength. The two nations will not only be competing for economic opportunities but for regional political influence. Politically unstable but resource-rich nations like Burma and Nepal might become sites of proxy wars between China and India. Mutual distrust among China and India along with unresolved conflicts about borders and territory might also jeopardize the uneasy peace between the countries.

And the role of the U.S. in the conflict? Holslag says:

Since the U.S. has prioritized stabilizing Afghanistan over everything else in Asia, it has lost a lot of credit in both Delhi and Beijing. It is increasingly reliant on China, but has also undertaken security exercises [under the Bush Administration] that tried to work together with democratic countries like Japan, India and Australia at the exclusion of China. This fed into the traditional political claustrophobia many in China have — a sense that, in the end, Asia will be a very hostile environment for their development and geopolitical rise.

At the same time, India won’t let itself be drowned in America’s orbit. It’s important for India to have its strategic independence. It has a very long and historically close relationship with Russia, which in turn is close to China. So it’s a little more complicated. I don’t think the Americans have thought very strategically about all of this.

The following is a post from Warren I. Cohen, author of America’s Response to China, Fifth Edition: A History of Sino-American Relations

In 1908, President Theodore Roosevelt spoke to a Chinese emissary of America’s hope for a strong, stable, and prosperous China. He professed to believe that such a China would be in the interest of the United States. Vice President Walter Mondale repeated Roosevelt’s words when he visited Beijing in 1979. In the early years of the new millennium, China has become strong, prosperous and reasonably stable—but many Americans are not so sure that’s good for them or their country.

Apprehension about the future of Chinese-American relations derives only marginally from the fact that China remains a nominally communist country in which the Communist Party monopolizes power. Unlike the days of the Cold War, when Soviet nuclear power loomed over us, few Americans fear a Chinese attack on the United States or the spread of communism. They do fear, however, the possibility of China outstripping the United States, China as # 1 in economic power and global influence.

For the United States, China’s recent surge has been a mixed blessing. For some years, China’s purchase of US debt has kept the American economy afloat, enabling its people to buy and enjoy cheap Chinese goods. Similarly, China’s economic growth has been the engine that drives the economies of its Asian neighbors. The boom years that much of the world enjoyed in the 1990s were in part a result of Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms, of China’s leap into the global marketplace. And however grudgingly, Beijing has moved toward acceptance of some international norms of behavior as evidenced by its role in the United Nations and in the World Trade Organization. But there are obvious caveats: American (and European) workers have lost jobs to lower paid Chinese workers and the undervalued Chinese currency has had a negative impact on the economies of the United States and the European Union.

Moreover, Chinese leaders share few Western values or priorities and there is little evidence of mutual trust between Beijing and Washington. Most recently, China has obstructed efforts to halt Iran’s march toward becoming a nuclear power. It has done too little to help the international community in its efforts to end North Korea’s nuclear threat and it has sustained vicious dictatorships in Burma, Sudan, and Zimbabwe.

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Last week, Democracy Now interviewed Robert Barnett, author of Lhasa: Streets with Memories, about Obama’s meeting with the Dalai Lama.

The meeting occurred over the protest of the Chinese government and represents, Barnett suggests, a more muscular approach from the American government toward China. The meeting also came at a very interesting point in U.S.-China relations and at a time when the Dalai Lama is offering a more conciliatory approach to China. Moreover, Tibet’s significance in the region has perhaps never been greater. Barnett explains:

There are some areas in Southeast Asia and South Asia where there is some nervousness about China. And interestingly, Tibet is exactly at the center of those tensions. Tibet is becoming surprisingly significant in ways that I think nobody really realized twenty years ago, in that it’s the nuclear tri-junction, probably the only one in the world, between Pakistan, India and China. Three nuclear powers face each other over that Tibetan border. And it’s also the source for the water supply for the main rivers that feed about a fifth of the world’s population. And, as we know, the glaciers there are showing signs of drying up. So future conflicts about water, that a lot of people predict, will probably involve Tibet, if it comes to that kind of tension. So, there are some feelings of nervousness about China in certain parts of Asia.

Here is the full interview:

On The China Beat Jeffrey Wasserstrom recently interviewed Warren I. Cohen about the forthcoming new (fifth) edition of his book America’s Response to China: A History of Sino-American Relations.

Here are some excerpts from the interview:

Jeffrey Wasserstrom: Looking back at the four times you revised it, what would you say was the revision that required the most dramatic updating?

Warren I. Cohen: Two things: 1) most obviously the rise of China to great power status. The last chapter of the new edition is titled “America in the Age of Chinese Power.” 2) the emergence of democracy in Taiwan. I had lived there 1964-1966 and grew very hostile to the regime there. I never expected the political changes that came in the 1980s and had no qualms about the island reverting to Beijing’s rule. I had to change my approach to the Taiwan issue, especially after the Tiananmen massacres.

JW: Is there any choice passage from a new part of the latest edition, whether in a “Preface” or “Epilogue,” that you’d be willing to share with us as a teaser? Or perhaps a section from an earlier edition that still seems surprisingly up-to-date in light of recent developments?

WIC: Here are the concluding lines of the new edition: “Today, much as in the time of Theodore Roosevelt, American leaders want—and American interests require—a peaceful, prosperous, open, responsible, and cooperative China. The chances of China realizing these hopes are reasonably good, given the extent of shared interests and what are likely to be the primarily domestic concerns of both nations in the near term. Americans who study and work on Chinese-American affairs would also like to see a democratic and friendly China. They are not likely to see either in the foreseeable future. And in the early years of the new millennium most Americans are not so sure that a strong China is in their nation’s interest.”

As reported in yesterday’s New York Times, the Italian-born Jesuit priest, Matteo Ricci, who died in 1610 is once again back in the news.

The New York Times article reviews the current exhibition at the Library of Congress of Matteo Ricci’s map of the world commissioned in 1602 by the court of Emperor Wanli. Ricci, who was the first Westerner admitted to Peking, created a map which was, according to the Times, “the first to have combined information from both eastern and western cartography. It is also the oldest surviving map to have given the Chinese a larger vision of the earth.”

In addition to the display of this historic map, Ricci’s resurgence continues with the recent publication of On Friendship: One Hundred Maxims for a Chinese Prince, translated by Timothy Billings. The book, which was a late Ming best seller and is now translated into English for the first time, distills the best ideas on friendship from Renaissance Latin texts into one hundred pure and provocative Chinese maxims.

You can browse the book but here is just a small sampling of maxims from On Friendship:

“Before making friends, we should scrutinize. After making friends, we should trust.”

“The value of a friendship lies in the intentions of those who make it. In this day and age, how many have befriended one another strictly for their virtue?”

“If we tolerate the vices of a friend, then those vices become our own vices.”

“If one has many intimate friends, then one has no intimate friends.”

“The honorable man makes friends with difficulty; the petty man makes friends with ease. What comes together with difficulty comes apart with difficulty; what comes together with ease comes apart with ease.”

At the end of the year, Jonathan Holslag, author of China and India: Prospects for Peace, was interviewed in the Wall Street Journal about the relationship between the two nations that many feel will be increasingly prominent in the coming decade.

Unlike those who see India and China as forming an interdependent relationship (Chindia), Holslag sees various factors that might cause friction between the nations. From the article:

[Holslag] doubts that the two countries are developing “a division of labor” – India as service provider and China as manufacturer – that might make their respective economic expansion paths “more competitive than cooperative.” He sees India and China as rising military rivals not only with entrenched border disputes but also as the major powers in a “belt of insecurity” stretching from Pakistan to Myanmar, each nation jostling for the upper hand in weak capitals around Asia and prone to proliferation as they eye the other’s diplomacy with suspicion.

And how does the United States figure into the idea of Chindia?:

Holslag is already on record as describing the U.S. as a “declining” power globally, and says Washington is on balance a factor that pushes India and China further apart. He argues that a financially weaker India, for instance, doesn’t have the mindset to respond to “growing pragmatism” in the Sino-U.S. relationship by cozying up to Washington, and instead will see more reason to build its power from within.

For more on the book, you can read an excerpt from the book.

One of the more interesting year-end lists comes from Bill Marx at PRI’s The World. Marx, a champion of books in translation and works published by university and independent presses, chooses a list of titles that raise the thorny issue of the relationship between literature new and the old.

Among his choices and the one he refers to as “the nerdiest pick on my list” is Theory of Literature and Other Critical Writings by Natsume Sōseki (see picture).

Here’s what Marx has to say about the book:

The nerdiest pick on my list, but for fans of one of Japan’s greatest novelists (“Kokoro,” “Kusamakura”) this volume of his literary criticism offers insights into his fiction as well as some prescient ideas about realism and multiculturalism. Much of the volume is made up of excerpts from Sōseki’s science-minded “Theory of Literature” – some of which are dated and dense. I suggest reading the informative introduction and skipping around until you hit pay dirt. For example, this interesting passage on the value of individuality from Sōseki’s essay “Philosophical Foundations of the Literary Arts”:

It is only when one has an ideal that is new, profound, or broad, only when one tries to realize that ideal in the world but finds the world foolishly prevents this – only then does technique become truly useful to the person in question. When the world prevents us from developing our ideal in real life, then the only avenue remaining is to use technique to realize that ideal in the form of a literary work.

Check out Bill Marx’s full list here and for more on The Theory of Literature and Other Critical Writings, you can browse and preview the book.

In yesterday’s New York Times, A. O. Scott reviewed Li Ying’s controversial documentary, Yasukuni, which recently opened in New York City. The film “explores [Japan's] legacy of militaristic nationalism, illuminating both the noble customs and the brutality entwined at its heart.” Yasukuni is a shrine dedicated to the Japanese war dead and holds the remains of war criminals. In recent years visits to the shrine by Japanese politicians has sparked protest in Japan as well as in China, Korea, and Taiwan.

The controversy surrounding the shrine is also the subject of Yasukuni, the War Dead, and the Struggle for Japan’s Past, edited by John Breen. The book presents authoritative yet divergent views on the shrine and its place in postwar Japanese diplomacy, ideology, and history. Critical contributions are written by leading Yasukuni and anti-Yasukuni Japanese intellectuals, as well as Chinese and Western commentators.

For more you can browse and search the book’s content.

And here’s a trailer for the documentary:

In an essay for the Web site China Beat, James Millward, author of Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang, examines the recent violence earlier this month in the western Chinese city of Urumchi and the disputed claims about what caused it.

Millward explains what happened, why it happened, and the role that radical Islam may or may not have played. He argues that ultimately the violence that erupted between the minority Muslim Uyghur population and the Han majority and Chinese security forces was not caused by outside forces or governments as the Chinese government claims but was a result of increasing ethnic and racial tensions in the region.

Here’s an excerpt from the essay in which Millward addresses the challenges China faces as it grapples with minority ethnic populations in a rapidly developing economy:

What Urumchi experienced was what Americans, recalling our own troubled history, might call a race riot. The reasons underlying it were likewise familiar: mundane prejudice including easy use of racial slurs by both Han and Uyghur about the other; a widespread perception by the minority Uyghurs, with some justification, that the political, legal and economic system, especially job opportunities, are stacked in favor of the majority Hans; and a simple lack of understanding or empathy for the different cultures of fellow citizens….

The proximate cause of the Urumchi troubles was labor migration, both of Uyghurs from Xinjiang to Guangdong, and of Han from other parts of China to Xinjiang, all associated with China’s super-charged market economy and state program to develop western parts of the country. But the deeper problem is essentially the same as that in any large, modern state: how to incorporate ethno-cultural diversity into the national vision. Chinese official rhetoric and policies in the past—especially in the early 1950s and late 1980s—were directed at this goal, but more recent approaches have too often depicted Uyghurs and Tibetans as ungrateful “others,” and even as threats to security. Both Uyghurs and Han have absorbed this message from state media. It has fueled Uyghur frustration and violence, and instilled in Hans a sense of grievance against minorities, their fellow Chinese.

China faces problems of interethnic tension and civil rights all too familiar to other countries in the world. Chinese leaders could enjoy international sympathy and support should they address these issues directly. But claiming that all ethnic problems at home arise from the conspiracies of exiles or machinations of foreigners will only elicit more international sympathy for Chinese minorities and criticism of China’s human rights record.

The current legal proceedings against Khmer Rouge leaders is once again bringing to light the regime’s horrible atrocities. One of the most powerful archives from the Cambodian genocide are the photographs from the Tuol Sleng Prison. In an essay on American Suburb X, Peter Maguire, author of Facing Death in Cambodia, discusses the portraits of inmates at S-21 torture, interrogation, and execution center.

Maguire writes, “Each of the almost 6,000 S-21 portraits that have been recovered tells a story shock, resignation, confusion, defiance and horror. Although the most gruesome images to come out of Cambodia were those of the mass graves, the most haunting were the portraits taken by the Khmer Rouge at S-21.”

In addition to discussing the history of S-21 and the photographs, Maguire also talked to Nhem En, who took many of the photographs at S-21. Maguire asked En about what was the most difficult part of taking pictures of people who would be killed. Here’s En’s response:

“It was difficult to take pictures of the newcomers who were blindfolded and tied up when they were leaving the truck. Sometimes they arrived in chains. Sometimes we got reprimanded; for example, if we took a picture of A and the photo was not good and A was already killed, then we were charged as the enemy. In here, if we did not carefully do our jobs we could not escape from being jailed or stopped from working.”

Here are some of the photos and you can see more here:

Needless to say, it’s not every day that one of our books gets mentioned in The People’s Daily, published by the government of China, so we thought their article Social stability spells well-being for commonality, was worth mentioning.

The article cites the book How East Asians View Democracy and its examination of how Asians view their governments and their roles as citizens. Not surprisingly, the article points to the book’s findings reflecting the relatively high level of support that the Chinese express for the government particularly when compared to that of the Japanese or the South Koreans.

The article ends with some subtle or perhaps not-so-subtle propaganda aimed at those who might criticize China’s rulers (the United States?). The concluding paragraphs are also interesting in light of recent ethnic unrest in Xinjiang:

“Indeed, the understanding of democracy may be different from people to people, and nation to nation. But the findings also ring an alarm to those who like to impose upon others their accepted values and ideas, or force others to believe what they believe is right or wrong.

Like any other people, the Chinese remain their uniqueness in culture and traditional values and also have their own understanding of freedom and democracy, ‘If you feel happy, you are happy,’ as a popular saying goes. The Chinese people of all ethnicities are savoring the most satisfactory moment in decades as a result of a booming economy and a stable political environment. They are bent on creating more wealth and happiness at the time and, therefore, will value more than ever a prosperous and harmonious society, with nary others’ meddling.”

Kim Yong, author of the just published, Long Road Home, was recently interviewed by the Australian Broadcasting Company about his time spent as a prisoner at the infamous North Korean labor camp 14 and the atrocities he witnessed there.

Listen to the interview with Mark Willacy on PM.

You can also read an excerpt from the book where Kim Yong details the everyday humiliations and inhuman treatment he received at the hands of Camp 14’s prison guards.

Recently BBC Radio interviewed James Millward, author of Eurasian Crossroads, on the ongoing situation in Xinjiang, China. Xinjiang province in China is home to a large Uighur minority population – ethnic Turkic Muslims – who the government says are radical Islamic terrorists. The Uighurs say that Chinese security forces killed peaceful demonstrators.

Listen to the BBC interview on The World Tonight as Millward explains the history behind these accusations and counter-accusations and tells us how both sides are spinning a story to make themselves look good.

The following is a post by Guobin Yang, author of The Power of the Internet in China: Citizen Activism Online.

According to a directive first issued by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on May 19, 2009, July 1 was to be the first day that computers in China would be required to be sold with a pre-installed filtering software called Green Dam-Youth Escort. However, the announcement of the policy drew such opposition both at home and abroad that in a welcome move, the Ministry announced yesterday its decision to hold off this policy indefinitely. This decision appears to be a positive response to the popular opposition that Chinese netizens have expressed.

The incident demonstrates yet again the power of the Internet in China. Both Chinese bloggers and Western media have hailed this new brand of online activism. I myself have commented on this display of Web power here. With the “Green Dam” controversy quieting down for now, it is helpful to step back and reflect a bit on some more enduring issues about Internet control and online activism in China.

The Green Dam policy indicates that there is still a surprising degree of bluntness in the exercise of state control over the Internet. In recent years, the Chinese government has demonstrated new levels of sophistication in affairs of Internet governance. One sign is the adoption since 2004 of a soft-management approach, which emphasizes self-discipline, civic responsibility, and the use of legal rather than administrative power to contain harmful contents. Part of the reason why the Green Dam policy met with such strong resistance is that it represented an unbearably heavy-handed approach to Internet control.

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