An American view: U.S. Relations with the PRC and Taiwan

Since Tiananmen in June of 1989 when U.S.-Chinese relations hit rock-bottom, the United States and China have gradually expanded and improved their relationship on the basis of reality, not wishful thinking and hype. At the same time, U.S. and Taiwan relations have substantially improved while China and Taiwan themselves have created a new atmosphere of economic cooperation. The new U.S.-China relationship based on human rights, nonproliferation, and trade reciprocity could bring greater stability but the United States must be on top of the emerging regional economic powerhouse of Taiwan-South China-Hong Kong and not be distracted by peripheral issues such as conditional MFN.     

What Is Critical Globalization Studies?

From a critical perspective, precisely what kind of knowledge about globalization is meaningful? The distinctive province of a critical orientation to globalization is coming to be defined by a complex of five interacting components: reflexivity, historicism, decentering, crossovers between social inquiry and other streams of knowledge, and an emphasis on strategic transformations. Critical globalization studies may be employed to identify diverse tendencies in world order, parts of a contradictory whole that coexist, with different logics colliding with one another. These are elements of the old configuration, multilateral globalization ; the contemporary structure, militarized globalization ; and the potential constellation, democratic globalization . The motor of transformation is not only countervailing power but also alternative knowledge, which should be demystifying and enabling.