Contenu du sommaire : Sports and Politics

The development of sports in China since the 19th nineteenth century has been influenced to varying degrees by imperialism, nationalism, Maoism, and postcolonial thinking. This paper explores these ideologies and political practices connected with sport during this time from three angles: Mao's early thought thinking on regarding physical culture and sport; the development of sports under Mao's socialism and the Cultural Revolution; and China's breakthrough in the post-Mao era. In sum, sport remains connected over time with the idea of « imagined Olympians » and of a response to the « Sick Man complex. » TFinally, he advent of postcolonial thought has opened the possibility of more diverse understandings of sports in China.

This paper, through a case study of Beijing's involvement in the 1952 Helsinki Olympic Games, provides a crucial historical analysis of China's current obsession with the Olympic movement and the ongoing Beijing/Taipei dispute over the national representation issue. It demonstrates that both Beijing's all-out campaign for the 2008 Games and the argument across the Strait about who should or should not represent China are nothing new, and are rooted in past experience.

This article examines the Chinese practice of body molding of children through detailed analysis of "physical education" and "physical exercise" as taught in Chinese primary schools. It shows that while some practices from the Maoist period may remain in use today, they have evolved or their meaning has been changed for adaptation to new aims and to the circumstances of China's only-child generation. Children must now embody a new set of moral values advocated by government.

For a long time, sports in China were mainly organized in a way that maximized their contribution to national prestige. The emergence of a true sports market is a very recent phenomenon. Tracking the development of China's sports market, this article argues that the industry has not yet reached its maturity and remains highly risky for investors.

The term tiyu can refer to Chinese traditional practices as well as “sports” as generally understood. While such a broad grouping of physical activities might appear surprising at first, it is not at all strange given the context in which sports were introduced in China.

This paper summarizes preliminary findings of a contextually rich case study that explores the link between globalisation and security. Following a broad-based and multidisciplinary widener's approach, namely a broad-based and multidisciplinary approach, the paper explores the strategic aspects of the migration of the Taiwanese semiconductor industry to China as part of the globalization processes. Based on a triangulation of interviews and secondary data analyzed so thus far, the paper first explores the drivers of the industry migration and the means by which Taiwanese state regulations are violated by related business operations. It then contends that these profit-driven activities have triggered multi-layered strategic challenges for Taiwan and the USA involving technological and defences security. Four inter-linked aspects of the strategic ramifications are analyzed. They are: industrial base concerns; technological y-related risks associated with the dual-use nature of the chip technology and the issue of foreign supply of critical chips; concerns reinforced by mainland Chinese institutional reforms and perceptions; risks reinforced by the Taiwan factor. The paper concludes by calling for an embrace of a widener's approach to the study of security.

Based on the examples of protest movements that took place in the villages of Taishi and Dongzhou, the article explores the limits of "citizen engagement" in China today.

After eight years of DPP administration, the 2008 legislative and presidential polls in Taiwan saw the Kuomintang return to power with the election of Ma Ying-jeou as the new president and an increased majority in the Parliament. Apart from the circumstantial factors behind this double victory, a detailed analysis of the poll results and comparisons with the results of previous elections reveals the recent evolution of an electorate that remains structurally oriented towards the KMT.

Analysis by Mathieu Duchâtel based on: Visit of the CPC Central Party School study group to Singapore, “The political party system in Singapore,” Xuexi shibao (Study Times), n° 420, 14 January 2008. Visit of the Party School study group to Singapore, “The mechanisms of the fight against corruption in Singapore,” Xuexi shibao (Study Times), n° 422, 28 January 2008.

Anne-Marie Blondeau, Katia Buffetrille (ed.), Authenticating Tibet: Answers to China's 100 Questions, Berkeley, UC Press, 2008, 364 pp.

Yu Jie, born in 1973 in Chengdu, won fame as an acerbic essayist in the late 1990s. A Beijing University graduate and self-declared Lu Xun imitator, he was dismissed from his first professional job at the China Modern Literature Museum in 2000 and chose to live by writing. He has championed various causes, including the US invasion of Iraq, right to religion in China (after he converted to Chirstianity), and reconciliation with Japan. He has openly said that before the current authorities' dispute with Japan over past history, Mao had hailed the Japanese invasion as a means of weakening Chiang Kai-shek, and that far from honouring Nationalist Anti-Japanese fighters, the People's Republic persecuted them as traitors. Yu Jie concluded that, “a sign of maturity of a people is its ability to have sufficient confidence to forgive.” Woeser, a Tibetan writing in Chinese, was relieved of her duties at the Tibetan Writers Association in 2003 after she published Notes on Tibet (Xizang biji), a collection of essays on the region's culture. She lives in Beijing with Wang Lixiong, whom she met while he was researching his book Celestial funeral (Tianzang). Wang Lixiong, born in 1953, became famous with his novel Yellow Peril (Huanghuo) in 1991, has also for long been an advocate of Tibetan and Uighur cultures, as well as gradual democratisation in China. Moreover, he has taken up environmental causes, starting an NGO for that purpose as far back as in 1994. Yu and Wang contributed to the 12-point proposals of Chinese intellectuals for resolving the Tibet conflict in March 2008.

Wang Xiaobo. Wang in Love and Bondage. Translated and with an introduction by Hongling Zhang and Jason Sommer. Albany: SUNY Press, 2007, 155 pp.