China is on the rise in the globalized world. The relationship between China and the United States has become the most important global issue in the twenty-first century. It is urgent to understand what is happening in China and where China is heading. However, there are many misconceptions about China in the West, which affect Westerners' ability to objectively understand China, and, ultimately influence the making of foreign policy toward China. The author attempts to challenge the misconceptions coming from both Western societies and China, and offer an integrated picture of contemporary China through systematically examining the major aspects of contemporary Chinese society and culture with the most recent data, and presents convincing arguments in eighteen chapters for spurring mutual understanding between China and the West. The author intends this book to be an interdisciplinary and comprehensive guide to China for a general audience, and it covers a wide variety of topics, including history, family, population, Chinese women, economy, environmental issues, politics, religion, media, U.S.-China relations, and other subjects. This book demonstrates the author's extensive research and thoughtful examination of many sides of controversial issues related to China with a nice balance of Western and Chinese scholarship. This is one of the few that are authored by scholars who originate from China and have their professional career in the United States, but it is distinctive from the rest of studies on this subject in that the author is committed to examining today's China from Chinese as well as Western perspectives. This is not only a scholarly book, but also is suitable for general classes on China.

China is on the rise in the globalized world. The relationship between China and the United States has become the most important global issue in the twenty-first century. It is urgent to understand what is happening in China and where China is heading. However, there are many misconceptions about China in the West, which affect Westerners' ability to objectively understand China, and, ultimately influence the making of foreign policy toward China. The author attempts to challenge the misconceptions coming from both Western societies and China, and offer an integrated picture of contemporary China through systematically examining the major aspects of contemporary Chinese society and culture with the most recent data, and presents convincing arguments in eighteen chapters for spurring mutual understanding between China and the West. The author intends this book to be an interdisciplinary and comprehensive guide to China for a general audience, and it covers a wide variety of topics, including history, family, population, Chinese women, economy, environmental issues, politics, religion, media, U.S.-China relations, and other subjects. This book demonstrates the author's extensive research and thoughtful examination of many sides of controversial issues related to China with a nice balance of Western and Chinese scholarship. This is one of the few that are authored by scholars who originate from China and have their professional career in the United States, but it is distinctive from the rest of studies on this subject in that the author is committed to examining today's China from Chinese as well as Western perspectives. This is not only a scholarly book, but also is suitable for general classes on China.

China's rise has become inevitable, but there is no agreement about whether China will rise peacefully or pose a threat to the United States. The author asserts that both theories of "China threat" and "peaceful rise" failed to address China's central domestic problem. Thus, both theories are not convincing. This book attempts to develop a third view of China's rise from a domestic perspective and contends that China's potential threat to the existing global order is not derived from her rapid economic growth and military expansion, but from her potential domestic chaos. A strong democratic China will contribute to the global peace, but the collapse of China will gravely threaten Western societies. The current Chinese political system directly contributes to this social instability and could possibly cause China's social crash. China's democratization is the key to ensure China's peaceful rise in a global context. However, the Party is still in power and any attempt to dissolve the one-party system in present day China has poor prospects. China must take a two-step, gradual reform approach to complete the transition from an authoritarian regime to a democratic one. In the two-step theory, the first phase for promoting China's democratization includes exercising freedom of media, increasing the consciousness of citizen participation, and enacting religious rights. Through all these democratic exercises, China will gradually be able to achieve a fully democratic society. This two-step theory is crucial for the United States if it is to enact effective foreign policy toward China and for China to develop a democratic harmonious society.

China's rise has become inevitable, but there is no agreement about whether China will rise peacefully or pose a threat to the United States. The author asserts that both theories of "China threat" and "peaceful rise" failed to address China's central domestic problem. Thus, both theories are not convincing. This book attempts to develop a third view of China's rise from a domestic perspective and contends that China's potential threat to the existing global order is not derived from her rapid economic growth and military expansion, but from her potential domestic chaos. A strong democratic China will contribute to the global peace, but the collapse of China will gravely threaten Western societies. The current Chinese political system directly contributes to this social instability and could possibly cause China's social crash. China's democratization is the key to ensure China's peaceful rise in a global context. However, the Party is still in power and any attempt to dissolve the one-party system in present day China has poor prospects. China must take a two-step, gradual reform approach to complete the transition from an authoritarian regime to a democratic one. In the two-step theory, the first phase for promoting China's democratization includes exercising freedom of media, increasing the consciousness of citizen participation, and enacting religious rights. Through all these democratic exercises, China will gradually be able to achieve a fully democratic society. This two-step theory is crucial for the United States if it is to enact effective foreign policy toward China and for China to develop a democratic harmonious society.

History has proved that communism failed at many levels during the first global competition between the capitalist and socialist camps during the Cold War. As a result, the socialist camp was dissolved. China is one of the few communist countries to survive in the twenty-first century. The Chinese economy was on the verge of collapse in the 1970s but began to take off in the early 1980s, guided by the China model. China became the world's second largest economy in 2010 and has quickly expanded its enormous global market and political influence. The second global competition between the capitalist countries and China has started. The second global competition is in fact between the China model and the Washington Consensus. Will Western hegemonies end as the result of the second global competition? Will China be able to rewrite the international rules? Will the Chinese communist political system collapse during the competition? What should the West do to the China model? This book will explore the implications of the China model in the context of the second global competition and argues that the downturn of the China model and China's global expansion are the two sides of the same coin. The China model is losing its power but not broken. China would be able to become even stronger, if it could reshape the philosophical foundation of the China model. The future of Western hegemony will depend on how the West understands the China model and deals with it. This book addresses these aspects and more.

Will China-U.S. relations come back to the normal track? Does the confrontational approach work for China-US relations? This book argues that it is an unrealistic hope to bring China-US relations back to the so-called normal track because the great power competition will be a new normal of China-US relations and the USA will gain more from strategic competition than cooperation in the long run. This book shows that the strategy of "great power cooperation through competition" is more positive and constructive than the approaches of "peaceful coexist" and "maximum pressure." This book does not intend to provide policy recommendations for governments to consider, but mainly to explain why the great power competition is inevitable and why it is necessary to continuously work with China in some areas through strategic competition. This book alarms the importance of understanding the nature of the Chinese Communist Party during the great power competition and aims to motivate both sides to revisit their foreign policy practice and come up with a better foreign policy strategy of handling China-US relations.

In this book, author Jinghao Zhou uses for the first time the prism of public philosophy to examine Chinese society, modernization, globalization, and democratization as a whole. Challenging conventional thinking in China studies, he examines China systematically in seven aspects: history, ideology, economy, politics, religion, education, and China's future, and does so from both Eastern and Western perspectives. The volume asserts that the remaking of China's public philosophy is they key for the nation to achieve both economic and political prosperity, making the bold argument that this remaking can contribute profoundly not only to China's development, but to international peace and development as well. In Remaking China's Public Philosophy for the Twenty-First Century, author Jinghao Zhou uses for the first time the prism of public philosophy to examine Chinese society, modernization, globalization, and democratization as a whole. Challenging conventional thinking in China studies, he examines China systematically in seven aspects: history, ideology, economy, politics, religion, education, and China's future, and does so from both Eastern and Western perspectives. The volume asserts that the remaking of China's public philosophy-the very principles and precepts it now takes for granted-is they key for the nation to achieve both economic and political prosperity. Zhou aims for a peaceful revolution of China's democratization while he explores a new paradigm in China studies, making the bold argument that this remaking can contribute profoundly not only to China's development, but to international peace and development as well.