Government & Politics

Over those same years, the PRC also experienced the most deadly famine in human history, caused largely by the actions and inactions of its political leaders. Not long after, there was a collapse of government authority that pushed the country to the brink of (and in some places actually into) civil war and anarchy.

Today, China is, for the most part, peaceful, prospering, and proud. This is the China that was on display for the world to see during the Beijing Olympics in 2008. The CCP maintains a firm grip on power through a combination of popular support largely based on its recent record of promoting rapid economic growth and harsh repression of political opposition. Yet, the party and country face serious challenges on many fronts, including a slowing economy, environmental desecration, pervasive corruption, extreme inequalities, and a rising tide of social protest.

The third edition of Politics in China has been extensively revised, thoroughly updated, and includes a new chapter on the internet and Politics in China. It is an authoritative introduction to how the world’s most populous nation and rapidly rising global power is governed today. Written by leading China scholars, the book’s chapters offers accessible overviews of major periods in China’s modern political history from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, key topics in contemporary Chinese politics, and developments in four important areas located on China’s geographic periphery: Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

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This updated and expanded fourth edition of Chinese Foreign Policy seeks to examine the decision-makers, processes, and rationales behind China’s expanding international relations as well as offering an in-depth look at China’s modern global relations.

Among the key issues explored in this edition are:

• The further expansion of Chinese foreign policy from regional (Asia-Pacific) to international interests;

• How the government of Xi Jinping has pursued a more confident great power foreign policy agenda;

• China’s growing economic power in an era of global financial uncertainty and the return of protectionism;

• Modern security challenges, including counter-terrorism, cyber-security, maritime power, military reform and modernisation, and the protection of overseas economic interests;

• China’s shifting power relationship with the United States under President Donald Trump;

• The deeper engagement of Beijing with a growing number of international and regional institutions and legal affairs;

• Cross-regional diplomacy, including updated sections on Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and Russia / Eurasia, as well as Oceania and the Polar regions;

• The development of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as a centrepiece of China’s foreign policy.

This book will be essential reading for students of Chinese foreign policy and Asian international relations (IR), and is highly recommended for students of diplomacy, international security, and IR in general.

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‘This is an important book that uncovers some remarkable secrets… Connor is an outstanding historian of wartime Asia and he tells his story well.’ Richard J. Aldrich, author of GCHQ: The Uncensored Story of Britain’s Most Secret Intelligence Agency.

Six weeks after Japan’s surrender in August 1945, British and Japanese troops were fighting side-by-side against nationalist revolutionaries in ‘peacekeeping’ operations in Indonesia and Vietnam. In Java, Dutch civilians cheered as their former jailors, members of the infamous kenpeitai rescued them from what had seemed certain death at the hands of armed mobs. In November 1945 a Japanese Army officer was recommended for a British Distinguished Service Order (DSO) for services rendered to South-East Asia Command after his troops helped restore order and save thousands of civilian lives.

‘The Japanese may be so deployed and…drastic action including shooting should be taken against any who refuse’. Admiral Mountbatten (to War Office), Kandy, 24 August 1945.

‘The men concerned are surely Japanese prisoners-of-war and if the War Office, in order to evade compliance with the Geneva Convention, have decided to call them something else, this should not…avoid responsibility for decent treatment.’ Foreign Office, London, 18 March 1946.

In August 1945 Britain accepted responsibility for the care and repatriation of over 750,000 Japanese military personnel in Southeast Asia. Short of manpower and resources in Burma and Malaya, and with its French and Dutch Allies’ colonial territories of Indo-China (FIC) and the Netherlands East Indies (NEI) embroiled in revolution, Britain found it expedient to press the Japanese-who were denied Prisoner of War (PoW) status-into military operations in support of European colonial interests and then ignore repatriation commitments by deliberately retaining over 100,000 as mass, unpaid labour.

‘[A] stain which would blemish the honor of the United Kingdom…’ General Douglas MacArthur, Tokyo, March 1947.

Mountbatten’s Samurai reveals a Britain struggling to match Great Power status and obligation without a Great Power budget or capability in Southeast Asia in the face of strong criticism from the US State Department in Washington, General Douglas MacArthur’s SCAP GHQ Occupation headquarters in Tokyo, the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC), the Japanese Government and even the Vatican.

‘A perceptive and shrewd analysis of the prolonged and secret diplomatic stand-off between London and Washington over Britain’s post-war use of tens of thousands of surrendered Japanese in combat operations in support of European colonial interests in contravention of the Geneva Convention, and later as deliberately retained, unpaid labour in breach of the Potsdam Agreement’. (Publisher’s Catalogue)

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