SEMINAR - CONTINUITY AND FRACTURE LINES IN CONTEMPORARY CHINA. POLITICAL THOUGHT AND INSTITUTIONS FROM MAO TO XI
(objectives)
"Through the seminar, students will be able to widen their skills on political sciences and international relations issues, focusing on one of the main political actors of the 21st century. From a historical point of view, the main educational aim is to underline the relation of what has happened in Chinese political thought and institutions during the last few decades to the new role role that this country is going to play in the international system. Providing a reading of the facts that also take into consideration “the Chinese perspective”, students will be able to update some key notions of Politics – such as “state” and “society”, “leadership” and “people”, “capitalism” and “socialism”, “autocracy” and “democracy” – and how these can be differently thought and eventually performed in the Chinese context in comparison with the Western one, even as they reveal an original agenda of public values. Finally, this may allow the political analyst to understand what further developments may occur in the short to medium term, foreshadowing what task China will be able to perform in a rapidly changing world scenario, characterized above all by the shift of its center of gravity, no longer firmly rooted in the West, or, at least, by the emergence of a multicenter system. "
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