Home>Courses>China’s Strategic and Diplomatic Cultures/China in Regional and World Systems

This course looks at the ways in which diplomacy and strategy have developed in the Chinese context. It examines Chinese strategic and diplomatic cultures through key historical texts, case studies, and contested ideas about Chinese approaches to international politics in peace and war. A theme of the course will be the question of how history and culture are understood in the present and what this can tell us about contemporary China.

Detailed Course Outline is available on Blackboard.

Week 1: Introduction: issues, frameworks and approach

Week 2: Culture and international politics

Week 3: Chinese strategic culture: Realpolitik or Idealpolitik?

Week 4: ‘Traditional’ Chinese World Order

Week 5: Reading the Sunzi Art of War

Week 6: No Class

Week 7: Mao Zedong and strategic culture

Week 8: PRC strategic culture and the Korean War

Week 9: PRC diplomatic culture: normalising US-China relations

Week 10: Negotiating the return of Hong Kong

Week 11: Negotiating and diplomatic cultures

Week 12: Chinese World Order in the 21st Century

Week 13: Conclusion: strategic and diplomatic culture in contemporary China

Critical Review (40%)

Final Paper (50%)

Participation (10%)

Attention is drawn to University policy and regulations on honesty in academic work, and to the disciplinary guidelines and procedures applicable to breaches of such policy and regulations. Details may be found at http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/policy/academichonesty/.

With each assignment, students will be required to submit a signed declaration that they are aware of these policies, regulations, guidelines and procedures.

• In the case of group projects, all members of the group should be asked to sign the declaration, each of whom is responsible and liable to disciplinary actions, irrespective of whether he/she has signed the declaration and whether he/she has contributed, directly or indirectly, to the problematic contents.
• For assignments in the form of a computer-generated document that is principally text-based and submitted via VeriGuide, the statement, in the form of a receipt, will be issued by the system upon students’ uploading of the soft copy of the assignment.

Assignments without the properly signed declaration will not be graded by teachers.

Only the final version of the assignment should be submitted via VeriGuide.

The submission of a piece of work, or a part of a piece of work, for more than one purpose (e.g. to satisfy the requirements in two different courses) without declaration to this effect shall be regarded as having committed undeclared multiple submissions. It is common and acceptable to reuse a turn of phrase or a sentence or two from one’s own work; but wholesale reuse is problematic. In any case, agreement from the course teacher(s) concerned should be obtained prior to the submission of the piece of work.