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1. Discuss how these factors, such as Confucian culture, a century of foreign invasions and historical trauma, influence of the Russian communist revolution, Marxist-Leninist ideological totalism, and the May 4th Movement, contribute to the rise of communism in modern China?
2. Chinese political development has demonstrated a pattern dominated by power, ideology, and organization. What are the nature and characteristics of power, ideology, and organization in traditional China (under imperial rule) and contemporary China (under the CCP rule)? In this essay, you are asked to compare and contrast similarities and differences in power, ideology, and organization between traditional China and contemporary China, i.e., imperial power vs. totalitarian power, Confucianism vs. Communism, bureaucratic state vs. Leninist party state.
3. Since the late 1970s, some considerable changes have taken place in post-Mao China. Has the post-Mao regime moved away from communist state or continued to retain the hard core of ideas and institutions of communist state. In other words, is it change of regime or change within the regime? Your work must first briefly define the Leninist party-state, and change of regime vs. change within the regime, which is used as the basic criteria for evaluation, and show careful development of your logical arguments, using clearly defined theoretical criteria of communist party state as the reference points for the evaluation and drawing upon empirical evidence from the textbook chapters to support your arguments. Your analysis must be conducted along two major empirical dimensions of China’s political development: ideological and political (do not talk about economy, society, culture, etc. but only on the ideology and political institutions)
4. What’s the “rule of law” vis “rule by law”? What legal changes have taken place in post-Mao China? To what extent such changes have affected the nature of the legal system? Has post-Mao China established “rule of law”? Why?
