关于中国国家的治理逻辑，本书主要沿着两条脉络进行探讨：一是中央权威与地方政府之间的关系，这体现在各级政府体制的制度设施和行为方式；一是国家与民众之间的关系，这体现在国家与社会群体的相互影响上。本书从学术上推进了当前国内的国家治理研究，并为社会科学研究者提供了一种可以参照 的研究路径和视角。

How China's political model could prove to be a viable alternative to Western democracy

Westerners tend to divide the political world into "good" democracies and “bad” authoritarian regimes. But the Chinese political model does not fit neatly in either category. Over the past three decades, China has evolved a political system that can best be described as “political meritocracy.” The China Model seeks to understand the ideals and the reality of this unique political system. How do the ideals of political meritocracy set the standard for evaluating political progress (and regress) in China? How can China avoid the disadvantages of political meritocracy? And how can political meritocracy best be combined with democracy? Daniel Bell answers these questions and more.

Opening with a critique of “one person, one vote” as a way of choosing top leaders, Bell argues that Chinese-style political meritocracy can help to remedy the key flaws of electoral democracy. He discusses the advantages and pitfalls of political meritocracy, distinguishes between different ways of combining meritocracy and democracy, and argues that China has evolved a model of democratic meritocracy that is morally desirable and politically stable. Bell summarizes and evaluates the “China model”—meritocracy at the top, experimentation in the middle, and democracy at the bottom—and its implications for the rest of the world.

A timely and original book that will stir up interest and debate, The China Model looks at a political system that not only has had a long history in China, but could prove to be the most important political development of the twenty-first century.

"This text demonstrates how the government of China has been significantly affected by attempts to harmonize the unique nature of its indigenous culture with a variety of influences and ideas from the outside world." "China faces many challenges to its traditional economic, legal, social, and cultural structures. China's Political System: Modernization and Tradition provides students with a clear sense of how this transition is taking place, what its effects on current leaders and policies are, and how the system might evolve in the future."--BOOK JACKET.

Japan and China have been rivals for more than a millennium. In more recent times, China was the more powerful until the late nineteenth century, while Japan took the upper hand in the twentieth. Now, China's resurgence has emboldened it even as Japan perceives itself falling behind, exacerbating long-standing historical frictions. June Teufel Dreyer's Middle Kingdom and Empire of the Rising Sun provides a highly accessible overview of one of the world's great civilizational rivalries that ranges from the seventh century to the present. Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, the shrinking distances afforded by advances in technology and the intrusion of Western powers brought the two into closer proximity in ways that alternately united and divided them. In the aftermath of multiple wars between them, including a long and brutal conflict in World War II, Japan developed into an economic power but rejected militarism. China's journey toward modernization was hindered by ideological and leadership struggles that lasted until the death of Mao Zedong in 1976. The final part focuses on the issues that dominate China and Japan's current relationship: economic rivalry, memories of World War II, resurgent nationalism, military tensions, Taiwan, the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands, and globalization. Dreyer argues that recent disputes should be seen as manifestations of embedded rivalries rather than as issues whose resolution would provide a lasting solution to deep-standing disputes. For the paperback edition, she has added a new afterword that takes readers up to the present day.