Faith in the future
Is this optimism a good sign for China's future?
Young Chinese confident in national development goal: survey
A recent survey conducted by the China Youth Daily found that young Chinese have high confidence in building China into a great modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious and beautiful by the middle of the century.
The survey had 10,393 participants from 31 provincial regions in China, among whom 67.4 percent were born in or after 1990…
The survey showed that those interviewed gave a ranking of 8.92 out of 10 on how confident they are in this national development goal, 50.8 percent even gave full marks of 10.
Respondents born in or after 2000 rated their confidence at 9.16 on average, the highest among all age groups. The young people living in rural areas rated their confidence at 9.04, higher than those in urban areas.
"Chinese people's confidence in the national development goal comes from their faith in the governing party, the development path we have taken, the guidance of Marxism and the fact that the Chinese people are always the masters of the nation and society," said Gong Yun, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
Labels: China, political culture, political socialization
Forward to the past?
During the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in Mao's China, young people — mostly students — were "sent down" to work in rural villages to "learn from the people." President Xi's government seems to be following another of Mao's practices.
Millions of Chinese youth 'volunteers' to be sent to villages in echo of Maoist policy
China is planning to send millions of youth “volunteers” back to villages, raising fears of a return to the methods of Chairman Mao’s brutal Cultural Revolution of 50 years ago.
 |
| 1970 poster from chinaposters.net |
The Communist Youth League (CYL) has promised to despatch [sic] more than 10 million students to “rural zones” by 2022 in order to “increase their skills, spread civilisation and promote science and technology”, according to a Communist party document.
The aim is to bring to the rural areas the talents of those who would otherwise be attracted to life in the big cities, according to a CYL document quoted in the state-run Global Times daily on Thursday…
Students will be called upon to live in the countryside during their summer holidays, although the CYL did not say how young people would be persuaded to volunteer.
Former revolutionary bases, zones suffering from extreme poverty and ethnic minority areas will receive top priority, according to the CYL…
Users on the Twitter-like Weibo social platform reacted warily. Many evoked the chaos of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, when Mao sent millions of “young intellectuals” into often primitive conditions in the countryside, while universities were closed for a decade…
President Xi Jinping, known for his nostalgia for the Mao era, himself spent seven years in a village in the poor northern province of Shaanxi from the age of 16.
Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed. Use the search box to look for country names or concept labels attached to each entry.
Just The Facts! 2nd edition is a concise guide to concepts, terminology, and examples that will appear on May's exam.
Just The Facts! is available. Order HERE.
Amazon's customers gave this book a 5-star rating.
Labels: China, political culture, political socialization
Shiny new app, same old propaganda
It sounds like some of the review sheets I have handed out, but with more restrictions on exact answers.
Uber but for Xi Jinping
If there’s one thing we know for certain about China in 2019, it’s that people there love their apps. They use WeChat to talk with friends; they spend hours battling virtual enemies on PUBG; they binge-watch short videos on Douyin. And so why shouldn’t the Communist Party get in on the action?
Xuexi Qiangguo — “study and make the nation great” — has become ubiquitous in China, an instant messenger, news aggregator and social network all in one introduced by the Publicity Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party in January. The first and second characters in the name, when combined — xuexi — mean “study/learn”; the same character, xi, also happens to be the character in President Xi Jinping’s surname. The app’s name, thus, can also be read as “study Xi and make the nation great.” And the Chinese are doing so, by the tens of millions.
As of late March, Xuexi Qiangguo had been downloaded over 73 million times on Huawei’s app store. It’s also currently the most-downloaded app on Apple’s Chinese app store, which is hard to reconcile with its average rating of just 2.7 stars out of five, until you take into account that all government and state-owned-enterprise employees, along with tens of millions of party members, have been “encouraged” to use it…
I wanted to experience Xuexi Qiangguo for myself… So last month I downloaded it and signed on. Suddenly there I was, immediately connected to my friends and colleagues. In the weeks since, I’ve been receiving several notifications a day; they include news coverage of Mr. Xi’s activities, a “golden quote of the day” from our president, “red patriotic songs” for me to listen to and links to online courses on traditional Chinese cultural heritage.
To do well on Xuexi Qiangguo requires a serious time commitment; those under peer pressure to use the app are typically expected to score two or three dozen points a day, and sometimes more. “Thirty points per day would only put me at the bottom among the members of the party branch I belong to,” one user on Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter, told me. “My colleagues are so passionate about competing,” the user said…
But to really score highly, I needed to take the quizzes — to answer questions on Mr. Xi’s speeches and works. That was where the real points were: If I correctly answered all the quiz questions, I could earn 24 points total.
And the questions were easy. The first one I encountered: “(Blank) is contemporary China’s Marxism, the 21st century’s Marxism, the guidance for our Party and our people to achieve the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, a proven, practically great, powerful ideological weapon, and must be persisted in and developed consistently over a long term.” The answer? “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era,” of course. What else?
Another question looked trickier at first glance: “Sticking to the Party’s overall leadership and coordination among different sectors, to build up a system with the Party’s full leadership role, and guarantee that the Party’s leadership is carried out in domains such as (blank), (blank), and (blank)”. Luckily, it was multiple choice. Among the answers were (A) Reforming, development and maintaining stability; (B) Domestic politics, foreign policy and defense; and (C) Governing the Party, the nation and the military. The answer was all of the above; the party is omnipotent, our leader in all arenas.
I gave up after about half an hour, earning a measly nine points. “Post your point of view and collect one point,” the app prompted. Why not? I thought, and moved into the comment section, only to be greeted with instructions like “only valid points of view will be awarded points” and “good comments will be prioritized for display.”…
Developed by the tech giant Alibaba, Xuexi Qiangguo has a certain polish to it. And it comes with some additional perks: Users can redeem their study points in businesses across the country for gifts like pastries, tablets, restaurant discounts and even free sightseeing tickets.
But no matter how fancy the new products look on the surface, at their core they remain the mandatory study of ideologically correct materials and the demonstration of allegiance to the central government. The minute I entered the quiz section, memories of my middle school years in Chinese classrooms came flooding back: the grandiose language, the endless repetition, the fixed answers, the publicly displayed class rankings — the collective memories of Chinese students across several generations. Many Weibo users have pointed out the parallels between Xuexi Qiangguo and the fervent “Little Red Book” campaigns of the Mao era.
And as with so many instances in which the government demands correct thought, there are already those who have learned to cheat the system. There are a sizable number of articles on how to earn credits efficiently circulating on WeChat, while tech-savvy users have turned to GitHub to download software that will earn points for them on the app automatically while they spend their time elsewhere…
So how effective has this new app effort been? Online user feedback is currently prohibited on the Apple app store, so we can gauge user’s reactions only through their earlier comments, before feedback was turned off. “Good, good, good,” one reviewer wrote. “Whatever you want me to say.” “We voluntarily downloaded this,” wrote another reviewer, who gave the app one star. “Truly.”
Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed. Use the search box to look for country names or concept labels attached to each entry.
Just The Facts! 2nd edition is a concise guide to concepts, terminology, and examples that will appear on May's exam.
Just The Facts! is available. Order HERE.
Amazon's customers gave this book a 5-star rating.
Labels: China, ideology, leadership, political socialization, propaganda
Little red app
During the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, the Communist Party of China published a book of quotations by Mao Tse-tung. It became known as The Little Red Book. Under President Xi, there is now "the little red app."
Little Red App: Xi’s Thoughts Are (Surprise!) a Hit in China
Call it the Little Red App.
Part social platform, part indoctrination tool, a new smartphone app called Study the Great Nation is the latest effort by the Chinese Communist Party to bring its propaganda initiatives into the mobile age.
So far, it seems to be working. Study the Great Nation recently became the most downloaded app on Apple’s app store in China, and on several app stores that cater to phones running Android as well.
Not all of the enthusiasm appears to have arisen organically, however. Since the app’s release at the beginning of the year, Communist Party branches at universities and local governments have arranged for administrators to guide and monitor party members as they use the app for political education…
Study the Great Nation, which was produced by the central government’s Publicity Department, has polish and sheen enough to match any of China’s popular news and entertainment apps. Most of those apps are not focused so narrowly, however, on all things Xi Jinping, the country’s leader.
In Study the Great Nation, you can catch up on the latest state media reports on Mr. Xi’s decisions, savor a quote of the day from Mr. Xi or brush up on “Xi Jinping Thought.” You can quiz yourself on Mr. Xi’s policies and pronouncements, or take in a television show called “Xi Time,” which is … well, you get the picture.
Doing each of these activities can reward users with “study points,” which can be redeemed for gifts in future versions of the app…
Is there a social element? Of course there is. Study the Great Nation is integrated with DingTalk, a messaging app made by the e-commerce giant Alibaba. As a result, you can call or text your friends in the app, host video hangouts and even send messages that disappear, Snapchat-style, after they are read…
Ratings and reviews for Study the Great Nation are currently disabled in Apple’s app store. But App Annie, an analytics firm, has preserved 497 reviews that had been submitted to Apple’s store as of Tuesday.
They are not kind, by and large. Many are laced with dry sarcasm. The average rating is 2.7 stars out of five…
Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed. Use the search box to look for country names or concept labels attached to each entry.
What You Need to Know 7th edition is ready to help.
Order the book
HERE
Amazon's customers gave this book a 4-star rating.
Labels: China, ideology, leadership, political socialization
Who are those "old boys?"
This opinion piece was written by Pankaj Mishra, an Indian essayist and novelist. What does it tell you about political socialization, the class system, and political culture in the UK?
The Malign Incompetence of the British Ruling Class: With Brexit, the chumocrats who drew borders from India to Ireland are getting a taste of their own medicine.
Britain’s rupture with the European Union is proving to be another act of moral dereliction by the country’s rulers. The Brexiteers, pursuing a fantasy of imperial-era strength and self-sufficiency, have repeatedly revealed their hubris, mulishness and ineptitude over the past two years. Though originally a “Remainer,” Prime Minister Theresa May has matched their arrogant obduracy, imposing a patently unworkable timetable of two years on Brexit and laying down red lines that undermined negotiations with Brussels and doomed her deal to resoundingly bipartisan rejection this week in Parliament.
Such a pattern of egotistic and destructive behavior by the British elite flabbergasts many people today. But it was already manifest seven decades ago during Britain’s rash exit from India…
Louis Mountbatten [the last British governor general of India]… was a representative member of a small group of upper- and middle-class British men from which the imperial masters of Asia and Africa were recruited. Abysmally equipped for their immense responsibilities, they were nevertheless allowed by Britain’s brute imperial power to blunder through the world…
Britain’s rupture with the European Union is proving to be another act of moral dereliction by the country’s rulers. The Brexiteers, pursuing a fantasy of imperial-era strength and self-sufficiency, have repeatedly revealed their hubris, mulishness and ineptitude over the past two years. Though originally a “Remainer,” Prime Minister Theresa May has matched their arrogant obduracy, imposing a patently unworkable timetable of two years on Brexit and laying down red lines that undermined negotiations with Brussels and doomed her deal to resoundingly bipartisan rejection this week in Parliament.
Such a pattern of egotistic and destructive behavior by the British elite flabbergasts many people today. But it was already manifest seven decades ago during Britain’s rash exit from India…
Even a columnist for The Economist, an organ of the British elite, now professes dismay over “Oxford chums” who coast through life on “bluff rather than expertise.” “Britain,” the magazine belatedly lamented last month, “is governed by a self-involved clique that rewards group membership above competence and self-confidence above expertise.” In Brexit, the British “chumocracy,” the column declared, “has finally met its Waterloo.”…
Ireland, England’s first colony, have proved to be the biggest stumbling block for the English Brexiteers chasing imperial virility. Moreover, Britain itself faces the prospect of partition if Brexit, a primarily English demand, is achieved and Scottish nationalists renew their call for independence…
Humiliations in neo-imperialist ventures abroad, followed by the rolling calamity of Brexit at home, have cruelly exposed the bluff of what Hannah Arendt called the “quixotic fools of imperialism.” As partition comes home, threatening bloodshed in Ireland and secession in Scotland, and an unimaginable chaos of no-deal Brexit looms, ordinary British people stand to suffer from the untreatable exit wounds once inflicted by Britain’s bumbling chumocrats on millions of Asians and Africans. More ugly historical ironies may yet waylay Britain on its treacherous road to Brexit. But it is safe to say that a long-cossetted British ruling class has finally come to the end of itself as it was.
Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed. Use the search box to look for country names or concept labels attached to each entry.
What You Need to Know 7th edition is ready to help.
Order the book
HERE
Amazon's customers gave this book a 4-star rating.
Labels: leadership, political culture, political socialization, UK
Renewal of an old theme
Re-education was a popular theme during the
Cultural Revolution in China. Will it work in Xinjiang now?
China 'legalises' internment camps for million Uighurs
China’s far north-western region of Xinjiang has retroactively legitimised the use of internment camps where up to one million Muslims are being held…
Chinese authorities deny that the internment camps exist but say petty criminals are sent to vocational “training centres”. Former detainees say they were forced to denounce Islam and profess loyalty to the Communist party in what they describe as political indoctrination camps…
“It’s a retrospective justification for the mass detainment of Uighurs, Kazakhs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang,” said James Leibold, a scholar of Chinese ethnic policies at Melbourne’s La Trobe University…
The revisions, published on Tuesday, say government agencies at the county level and above “may establish occupational skills education and training centres, education transformation organisations and management departments to transform people influenced by extremism through education”.
A new clause directs the centres to teach the Mandarin language and provide occupational and legal education, as well as “ideological education, psychological rehabilitation and behaviour correction”. Another new clause bars “refusing public goods like radio and television.”…
“Overall, this clearly strengthens the legal basis for the type of re-education that has essentially been admitted by the state … indicating that the state is determined to proceed with the current campaign,” said Adrian Zenz, a researcher who focuses on Xinjiang…
Beijing has spent decades trying to suppress pro-independence sentiment in Xinjiang fuelled in part by frustration about an influx of migrants from China’s Han majority. Authorities say extremists there have ties to foreign terror groups but have given little evidence to support the claim…
Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed. Use the search box to look for country names or concept labels attached to each entry.
What You Need to Know 7th edition is ready to help.
Order the book
HERE
Amazon's customers gave this book a 4-star rating.
Labels: China, cleavages, political culture, political socialization
Required national service in Nigeria
Doing a year's worth of "national service" in Nigeria opens many doors for ambitious university graduates.
Kemi Adeosun: Nigeria minister resigns over forged certificate
Nigeria's finance minister has resigned over allegations she used a forged certificate to avoid the country's mandatory one-year youth service scheme.
Kemi Adeosun, who lived in the UK until she was 34, said she had been told she was exempt because she was over 30.
The former investment banker said she was issued with a certificate that she thought was genuine.
But an internal investigation showed that it was forged.
Ms Adeosun's resignation follows months of speculation in local media about whether her National Youth Service Corps certificate was genuine.
The dual Nigerian and British national did not initially comment on the claims, leading to criticism from her opponents.
However in a statement, she said she felt bound to resign after the investigation result became known.
"This has come as a shock to me and I believe that in line with this administration's focus on integrity, I must do the honourable thing and resign," she said.
Ms Adeosun was appointed as finance minister by President Muhammadu Buhari in 2015. Her main policy was a bid to improve tax collection and crack down on mismanagement by government agencies…
Nigerian university students have to do a year of national service upon graduation as a way of ensuring that graduates contributed to Nigeria's development.
Corp members are posted to states outside their state of origin to encourage national unity.
Nigerian graduates are not eligible for government work or many private jobs until they have completed the mandatory year of service.
National Youth Service Corps (Abuja)
Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed. Use the search box to look for country names or concept labels attached to each entry.
Just The Facts! 2nd edition is a concise guide to concepts, terminology, and examples that will appear on May's exam.
Just The Facts! is available. Order HERE.
Amazon's customers gave this book a 5-star rating.
Labels: leadership, nationalism, Nigeria, political socialization
Cosplay as political education
In China, the Long March was a crucial episode in the civil war of the 1930s. Beginning in Jiangxi Province, it was an epic retreat of the Communist army as the Kuomintang (Nationalists) tried to follow them. Mao Zedong became the leader of the Communist forces during the retreat.
Now, educational tourism is a growing business in Jiangxi.
China’s ‘red education’ history tours and the rise of communist cosplay
If anyone can best tell the scale and intensity of China’s “red education” drive to promote loyalty to the ruling Communist Party, it’s businessman Yu Meng.
The 36-year-old runs the largest Red Army uniform rental business in Jinggangshan, a city dubbed the “cradle of the communist revolution” deep in the mountains of Jiangxi. Last year alone, his company rented uniforms to 256,000 people taking part in red ideology study tours.
 |
| Political tourists in rented uniforms |
Yu started the Xiangganbian Red Army uniform company 10 years ago. But it’s only in the last three years that the business has really taken off, thanks to the relentless push of patriotic education by President Xi Jinping. Xi has said he wants “faith” in communist rule to be passed down to a new generation as “red DNA”…
Most of the visitors to Jinggangshan now are civil servants, employees of state and private enterprises, and students. They are sent by their employers or schools as part of their work or study requirements.
The number of people going to the city for study tours jumped by more than 50 per cent every year from 2015 to 2017, according to the Jinggangshan government…
Many, though not all, government ministries, companies and schools make it mandatory for their employees or students to wear period uniforms for the four or five days of site visits and classes during a Jinggangshan study tour.
Yu said donning a Red Army suit – the uniform of Communist guerillas in the late 1920s and early ’30s during the civil war against the Nationalists – while visiting the city had become a phenomenon.
With the trend taking hold, Jinggangshan’s historical sites now look like they are hosting mass cosplay gatherings. Busloads of uniformed visitors swarm the city’s museum, Mao’s two former residences, and the mountaintop where Communist forces fended off the Nationalist army…
Xi has promoted red education since he came to power that year. Under his aegis, the party has intensified its clampdown on dissidents and internet censorship. The government has also used red education to promote party loyalty as a “faith”, or xinyang in Chinese, a term that can also be translated as “religion”…
But Beijing appears concerned that its message is being lost amid the uniforms and tourism. An article in party newspaper Guangming Daily last month warned that many of the study tours had become “sightseeing paid for by the government”. Another, in a magazine affiliated with state-run Xinhua, said many participants cared only about taking pictures of themselves in uniform outside historic sites and were not serious about studying the ideology the party “wants to put into their hearts”…
Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed. Use the search box to look for country names or concept labels attached to each entry.
What You Need to Know 7th edition is ready to help.
Order the book
HERE
Amazon's customers gave this book a 4-star rating.
Labels: China, history, ideology, political socialization
Cultural Revolution, take two
During the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in the 1960s, every bit of pop culture and high culture was tasked with promoting Mao and Communism. Traditional Chinese opera tales were mangled to teach lessons of Mao's
Little Red Book. Is President Xi taking political culture down a similar road?
With Odes to Military March, China Puts Nationalism Into Overdrive
These are triumphant times for the Communist Party. President Xi Jinping, the general secretary, governs with seemingly unobstructed authority. The balance of power in Asia and the Pacific appears to be shifting in China’s favor. Extreme poverty, especially in rural areas, is nearing eradication.
And yet the Communist government seems intensely vulnerable at times as it confronts a slowing economy and a society in the throes of staggering change. In a country still working to find its place in the world, the party whips up nationalism as an elixir…
It has been 80 years, we are told again and again, since the end of the Long March, the 6,000-mile retreat of Communist forces that established Mao’s pre-eminence and gave the party its soul. More than 80,000 people died in the march, which began in 1934, but the bravery of the soldiers inspired generations of Chinese people to rally behind the party and its leader.
On television, Long March soap operas, documentaries and variety shows abound. Tour agencies offer packages retracing the soldiers’ routes. Students put on virtual reality goggles to relive famous battles. Joggers use a Long March-themed fitness app to measure their steps against the Red Army’s…
President Xi has been making the case for a “new long march,” using the anniversary to rally the public and warn against creeping complacency, especially among the young. “A nation that forgets its origins will find itself in a blind alley,” he said in a speech late last month.
On the whole, the spirit of the propaganda campaign is unambiguous: Chinese citizens should seek to emulate the ideals of self-sacrifice and perseverance that the soldiers of the Long March embodied. Above all, the messaging makes clear, people should show unwavering loyalty to the Communist Party.
The Long March allowed the Red Army to escape defeat at the hands of the Kuomintang forces of Chiang Kai-shek in southern China. The Communists regrouped in the north before going on to victory in the civil war in 1949…
 |
| Long March diva |
“The Long March” opera, in development for four years, is a highlight of the government’s unfolding spectacle, featuring a cast of nearly 200 and a cymbal-heavy score that blends Chinese folk songs with Italian-style arias. It is one of the grandest political operas to debut in Beijing since the Cultural Revolution, when Mao and his wife, Jiang Qing, made works celebrating the Communist Party a mandatory part of the repertoire at Chinese concert halls…
Near the end of the opera, as Red Army soldiers confront the scourges of disease and starvation, eating tree bark to survive, a young soldier named Ping Yazi is poisoned by wild vegetables. He becomes lost in a swamp, firing a shot into the air to warn away his fellow troops.
“I’m not afraid of death,” he sings, sinking underground. “I’m just reluctant to leave the Red Army.”
Soon after, red lights illuminate the theater, revolutionary flags fill the stage, and a song-and-dance routine breaks out. “Long live the Red Army!” the soldiers sing. “Long live the Long March!”…
Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed. Use the search box to look for country names or concept labels attached to each entry.
What You Need to Know 7th edition is ready to help.
Order the book
HERE
Amazon's customers gave this book a 4-star rating.
Labels: China, history, political socialization
Political socialization
Many countries have to deal with the problems of politically socializing minority ethnic and national groups. The problem in northwest China is significant.
Which policies are effective and which ones counterproductive?
Xinjiang Seethes Under Chinese Crackdown
Families sundered by a wave of detentions. Mosques barred from broadcasting the call to prayer. Restrictions on the movements of laborers that have wreaked havoc on local agriculture…
 |
| Xinjiang |
A recent 10-day journey across the Xinjiang region in the far west of China revealed a society seething with anger and trepidation as the government, alarmed by a slow-boil insurgency that has claimed hundreds of lives, has introduced unprecedented measures aimed at shaping the behavior and beliefs of China’s 10 million Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim minority that considers this region its homeland.
Driving these policies is the government’s view that tougher security and tighter restraints on the practice of Islam are the best way to stem a wave of violence…
Southeast of Kashgar, shopkeepers in the city of Hotan seethed over a government decision to outlaw two dozen names considered too Muslim, forcing parents to rename their children or be unable to register them for school, according to local residents and the police.
To the north in Turpan, a fertile oasis famed for its grapes, a vineyard owner complained about new restrictions that bar Uighur migrant laborers from traveling there for the harvest, leaving tons of fruit to wither on the vines.
Other measures contribute to the widespread perception that Uighur identity is under siege. Schools have largely switched to Mandarin as the main language of instruction instead of Uighur, and the government has begun offering cash and housing subsidies to encourage intermarriage between Uighurs and Hans, the country’s ethnic majority, who have migrated to the region in large numbers…
“The state’s ability to penetrate Uighur society has become increasingly sophisticated and intrusive,” said James Leibold, an expert on China’s ethnic politics at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. “But while these new measures allow the party to nip a lot of problems in the bud, they also foster new forms of alienation and violence that ultimately weaken the party’s legitimacy and rule.”…
It remains a matter of dispute whether radical Islam has taken hold among many Uighurs, the majority of whom subscribe to a moderate form of Sunni Islam. But the recent terrorist attacks in Paris and the Islamic State’s killing in November of a Chinese hostage in Syria have prompted Beijing to step up efforts to position its battle to pacify Xinjiang as part of the global war on violent religious extremism.
Experts outside China, however, say much of the bloodshed here is fueled by local grievances, among them job discrimination against Uighurs, endemic poverty and a widespread belief that the flood of Han migrants to the region is part of a government plan to dilute Uighur identity…
Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed. Use the search box to look for country names or concept labels attached to each entry.
The Comparative Government and Politics Review Checklist.
Two pages summarizing the course requirements to help you review and study for the final and for the big exam in May. . It contains a description of comparative methods, a list of commonly used theories
, a list of vital concepts, thumbnail descriptions of the AP6,
and
a description of the AP exam format
. $2.00.
Order HERE.
Just The Facts! 2nd edition is a concise guide to concepts, terminology, and examples that will appear on May's exam.
Just The Facts! is available. Order HERE.
Amazon's customers gave this book a 5-star rating.
What You Need to Know 7th edition is ready to help.
Order the book
HERE
Amazon's customers gave this book a 4-star rating.
What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools, the original version and v2.0 are available to help curriculum planning.
Labels: cleavages, political socialization, politics
Promoting morality or keeping women down?
Please refer back to the earlier post here about ethnocentrism when thinking about the question in the title of this blog post.
Every spring, as temperatures rise in Iran, conservative clerics and the morality police get more active in identifying, chastising, and sometimes prosecuting women who dress improperly. Here's a new approach.
Political socialization begins early in life. Would these proposed lessons in Iran be in social studies classes?
Baby steps? Toddlers in Iran taught chastity, hijab lessons
Islamic dress and notions of chastity will be taught to toddlers in Iran, as part of a move by the country to instill Islamic teachings into the younger generation, a report on Wednesday revealed.
The governor of Tehran, Morteza Tamadon, has recently stressed the importance of “popularizing” chastity and hijab among Iranians, advising that kindergarteners be taught, “before reaching those in higher education,” the Guardian reported.
“We cannot expect to see hijab and chastity exist in society without proper cultural work,” he said. “Our goal in the social transformation plan devised by the government is institutionalizing chastity and hijab as a natural [demand] in society,” he said…
As for a program targeting toddlers, the welfare office of the Iranian city of Qom is reportedly “training 400 experts on hijab and chastity who will be sent to kindergartens across the city,” according to the Guardian.
The report added that 1,530 kindergartens under the jurisdiction of a north-eastern province have already held “chastity and hijab exhibitions” in recent months…
Teaching Comparative blog
entries are indexed.
The First Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools is now available from the publisher
The Fifth Edition of What You Need to Know is now available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).
Labels: Iran, political culture, political socialization, politics
Networking and change
William Wan and Zhang Jie, writing in the
Washington Post, put a lot of their emphasis on that old bogeyman,
guanxi (China's version of networking, which is nothing new). What seems at least equally important is the goal of maintaining Communist Party power while adapting the official ideology to structural change in the economy and globalization.
Can a party with an official version of reality (ideology) be flexible enough to maintain power in the 21st century?
China’s mid-level party officials spend professional training time cultivating allies
For decades, professors at the Central Party School have safeguarded the ideology of China’s Communist Party, indoctrinating each generation of officials in the teachings of Marx, Lenin and Mao.
 |
| Central Party School |
The school has persevered in its mission despite massive changes in society and the economy…
The students — largely middle-age government officials looking for promotion — no longer see their mandatory time at the school as a chance to immerse themselves in the wisdom of communism. Instead, it’s become a prime place to cultivate allies with whom they can trade future favors and backdoor deals to further their careers and wealth…
To counter such pressures, the school has strived in recent years to modernize its Marxist theories, overhaul its curriculum and enact stronger controls over students…
At stake, some teachers at the school believe, is nothing less than the ideological soul and future of the Communist Party…
The students are mostly in their early 40s to late 50s. And campus life sometimes resembles a communist reality show gone awry — middle-aged men shoved into campus dorms, largely confined to campus and forced to discuss their ideological forebears.
The most elite students at the central school are those officials handpicked for their potential to fill the country’s highest offices. Enrolled in a year-long program, they are carefully assessed by party representatives, who often live among them and sit in on their classes…
[L]eaders in recent years have strived to overhaul the schools’ curriculum.
While Marx’s Das Kapital still appears on most reading lists, officials now spend much more time on subjects such as international monetary policy, management theory and even the realms of leadership style, psychology and the importance of personal health amid the pressures of governing.
Teaching methods have also changed drastically.
“The old way used to consist entirely of you lecturing from a platform,” said one frequent guest speaker. “It’s much more dynamic now. Students get case studies. They bring in problems from their own provinces for study.”…
“Modern knowledge is taught in the hope that it will be useful to maintaining party rule,” said Alan P. Liu of the University of California at Santa Barbara…
Teaching Comparative blog
entries are indexed.
The First Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools is now available from the publisher
The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).
Labels: China, Communist Party, ideology, leadership, political socialization, recruitment
Chinese Party says, "Let's celebrate the Party!"
October 1 is China's national day. Here's the official word from the Communist Party of China. This press release seems better translated than many of those that show up in
Xinhua.
CPC leads China to prosperity
China is preparing for the 63rd anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC), which falls on October 1, amid a joyous atmosphere.
Sixty-three years ago, the Chinese people, under the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC), achieved revolutionary victory and kicked off a great journey for the nation's rejuvenation.
Thanks to diligent construction over six decades, especially during its reform and opening-up period lasting more than 30 years, China has become very vigorous, developing to the extent that it now has the world's No. 2 gross domestic product (GDP) and foreign trade volume. China's per capita GDP exceeds 5,000 U.S. dollars…
At this particular moment of celebration, we can only draw one conclusion: China's achievements during the past 63 years hinge on the CPC's leadership and the unity and innovative spirit of the Chinese people.
The CPC has explored a correct path combining Marxism with the Chinese reality. The Chinese people, under the CPC leadership's, have blazed a socialist trail with Chinese characteristics and formed a system of socialism with Chinese characteristics.
At this particular moment, Chinese are more confidently grasping opportunities and accelerating development, so as to lay solid foundations for building a moderately prosperous society in all respects.
To seek a brighter future for the country, Chinese people are sticking to the "Scientific Outlook on Development." In contemporary China, only development counts, and this calls for pursuing scientific advances…
See also:
Teaching Comparative blog
entries are indexed.
The First Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools is now available from the publisher
The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).
Labels: China, Communist Party, political socialization, politics
Civic unrest in Nigeria
Back in 1993, Steven Metz, then Chairman of the Regional Strategy and Planning Department and Research Professor of National Security Affairs at the Strategic Studies Institute, authored a book titled
The Future of Insurgency. The synopsis begins with, "Security professionals and strategists are discovering the post-cold war world is as rife with persistent, low-level violence as its predecessors."
That describes the insurgency in Nigeria very well. Google
Boko Haram or search for it in this blog. The leaders of Boko Haram have recently added the idea of secession from Nigeria to their wish list.
The questions that observers have to ask center around the ability of the Nigerian state to combat the insurgency. That, of course, involves issues of capacity, governance, legitimacy, political socialization, and political integration.
In other words, the insurgency of Boko Haram has to be a conscious part of any study of Nigerian government and politics.
25 Dead in Nigeria After Multiple Attacks by Sect
A radical Islamist sect unleashed multiple attacks in northeastern Nigeria, killing at least 25 people, authorities said Tuesday as fears swelled about the government's inability to corral rising sectarian violence…
"The terrorists are trying to show that they can't be stopped," said Yobe State police chief Patrick Egbuniwe, who said the dead included three policemen and two soldiers.
The Islamist Boko Haram sect, whose name means "Western education is sacrilege" in the Hausa language, is waging an increasingly bloody fight with Nigeria's security agencies and public. More than 580 people have been killed in violence blamed on the sect this year alone, according to an Associated Press count.
The violence came a day after Boko Haram claimed responsibility for a trio of deadly church bombings Sunday in the northern state of Kaduna, which, along with ensuing reprisal killings, left at least 70 people dead and over 100 wounded…
Teaching Comparative blog
entries are indexed.
The First Edition of What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools is now available from the publisher
The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).
Labels: capacity, legitimacy, Nigeria, political integration, political socialization, politics
