China

This introductory course covers political history, policy process and institutional issues, leadership and the challenge of socioeconomic modernization. Focuses on recurrent and substantive policy issues in Chinese politics.

Yet despite its growing power and influence, it maintains an ambivalent attitude towards international law and the liberal international order. This class will explore that ambivalence, and will in particular examine how China might adapt to the existing world order and the ways in which China will look to influence its evolution. The class will cover China’s approach to international peace and security, China’s membership in the WTO, Beijing’s engagement with the international human rights regime, and the South China Sea dispute, among other topics.

Students will examine the foreign policy process in each nation, recurrent policy issues and their implications for each nation’s behavior, and relations with third parties.

Students will examine Chinese perspectives on, and responses to, contemporary national security issues such as North Korea's nuclear program, proliferation more generally, Taiwan and cross-Strait relations, energy security and sea lane protection, space and cyberspace security, and US ""rebalancing"" to the Asia-Pacific region.