Asian Arguments

China's Urban Billion
The story behind the biggest migration in human history
Tom Miller
22 November 2012

Will China's cities be paved with gold or pockmarked with slums?

In 2012 China will hit a development milestone: For the first time, half of the country's 1.3 billion citizens will live in urban areas. An additional 350 million future city dwellers are still completing the journey...

Who's Afraid of China?
The Challenge of Chinese Soft Power
Michael Barr
8 September 2011

If China suddenly democratised, would it cease being labelled as a threat? This provocative book argues that fears of China often say as much about those who hold them as they do about the rising power itself. It focuses not on the usual trope of economic and military might, but on China's...

Ballot Box China
Grassroots Democracy in the Final Major One-Party State
Kerry Brown
14 April 2011

Since 1988, China has undergone one of the largest, but least understood experiments in grassroots democracy. Across 600,000 villages in China, with almost a million elections, some three million officials have been elected. The Chinese government believes that this is a step towards `democracy...