The rise of China over the last two decades is one of the most significant events that shape trade and economic development, and geopolitics. Its implications on worldly issues from global and regional peace and security to the sustainability of the environment are profound. The China factor is an amalgamation of dynamic, complex and interactive forces that appear as problems, puzzles or challenges. This course aims to provide an orientation for students to understand those forces, especially those related to the major stakeholders and their evolving relationships, policies and game rules, and collective behaviors. The orientation is grounded in both Chinese historical and cultural legacies and the contexts of China’s state building, modernization and globalization.

This course provides graduates with a broad introduction to Contemporary China’s political, economic, and strategic challenges. The course covers a wide array of topics in primarily three areas: trade, foreign policy and development challenges. More specifically, the topics include Chinese imperial legacies and revolution, contemporary political institutions and policy making processes, the opening of China and its reforms and their resulting challenges, China’s role in global peace and development, its relations with U.S., Russia and the other Asian powers and the other powers of the world powers, and the mainland-Taiwan relation, China’s trade and investment policy before and during the reform era, the Chinese economic regime and policy making process, China’s industrial policy and national standard strategy, and China’s environmental and energy challenges and sustainable development.

This course will be wrapped around by an optional immersive professional portion of summer field research projects in two sites of China (Beijing and Kunming) in summer 2016. This will be a multi-term curricular sequence on studying Chinese politics, foreign policy and development challenges. It is aimed at robustly deepening the participating students’ understanding and appreciation of Chinese politics and economy. It will also develop participants’ professional skill set through experiential learning.