In the mid-eleventh century BCE, the Zhou overthrew the Shang, a dynastic power that had dominated much of northern and central China. Over the next three centuries, they would extend the borders of their political control significantly beyond those of the Shang. The Zhou introduced a political ideology centered on the Mandate of Heaven to justify their victory over the Shang and their territorial expansion, portraying the Zhou king as ruling the frontier from the center of civilization. Present-day scholarship often still adheres to this core-periphery perspective, emphasizing cultural assimilation and political integration during Zhou rule. However, recent archaeological findings present a more complex picture. Many Worlds Under One Heaven analyzes a wide range of newly excavated materials to offer a new perspective on political and cultural change under the Western Zhou. Examining tombs, bronze inscriptions, and other artifacts, Yan Sun challenges the Zhou-centered view with a frontier-focused perspective that highlights the roles of multiple actors. She reveals the complexity of identity construction and power relations in the northern frontiers of the Western Zhou, arguing that the border regions should be seen as a land of negotiation that witnessed cultural hybridization and experimentation. Rethinking a critical period for the formation of Chinese civilization, Many Worlds Under One Heaven unsettles the core-periphery model to reveal the diversity and flexibility of identity in early China.

Many Worlds Under One Heaven: Material Culture, Identity, and Power in the Northern Frontiers of the Western Zhou, 1045–771 BCE (Tang Center Series in Early China)

Arts & Photography

SUN, Yan

History & Criticism

Columbia University Press

Authored by internationally recognized experts on optical solitons, this book addresses the forefront of technology in the important field of optical communications. It deals with topics from the motion of light waves in optical fibres to the evolution of light wavepackets, and other applications.

Network-Aware Security for Group Communications

Science & Math

Liu, K. J. Ray

Trappe, Wade

Physics

Springer

This book aims to fill a growing need in the research community for a reference that describes the state-of-the-art in securing group communications. It focuses on tailoring the security solution to the underlying network architecture (such as the wireless cellular network or the ad hoc/sensor network), or to the application using the security methods (such as multimedia multicasts).

Reference

A momentous debate has been unfolding in China over the last fifteen years, only intermittently in public view, concerning the merits of socialism as a philosophy of social justice and as a program for national development. Just as Deng Xiaoping's better advertised experiment with market- based reforms has challenged Marxist-Leninist dogma on economic policy, the years since the death of Mao Zedong have seen a profound reexamination of a more basic question: to what extent are the root problems of the system due to Chinese socialism and Marxism generally? Here Yan Sun gathers a remarkable group of primary materials, drawn from an unusual range of sources, to present the most systematic and comprehensive study of post-Mao reappraisal of China's socialist theory and practice. Rejecting an assumption often made in the West, that Chinese socialist thought has little bearing on politics and policymaking, Sun takes the arguments of the post-Mao era seriously on their own terms. She identifies the major factions in the debate, reveals the interplay among official and unofficial forces, and charts the development of the debate from an initially parochial concern with problems raised by Chinese practice to a grand critique of the theory of socialism itself. She concludes with an enlightening comparison of the reassessments undertaken by Deng Xiaoping with those of Gorbachev, linking them to the divergent outcomes of reform and revolution in their respective countries.

The Chinese Reassessment of Socialism, 1976-1992

History

Asia

Princeton University Press

A momentous debate has been unfolding in China over the last fifteen years, only intermittently in public view, concerning the merits of socialism as a philosophy of social justice and as a program for national development. Just as Deng Xiaoping's better advertised experiment with market- based reforms has challenged Marxist-Leninist dogma on economic policy, the years since the death of Mao Zedong have seen a profound reexamination of a more basic question: to what extent are the root problems of the system due to Chinese socialism and Marxism generally? Here Yan Sun gathers a remarkable group of primary materials, drawn from an unusual range of sources, to present the most systematic and comprehensive study of post-Mao reappraisal of China's socialist theory and practice. Rejecting an assumption often made in the West, that Chinese socialist thought has little bearing on politics and policymaking, Sun takes the arguments of the post-Mao era seriously on their own terms. She identifies the major factions in the debate, reveals the interplay among official and unofficial forces, and charts the development of the debate from an initially parochial concern with problems raised by Chinese practice to a grand critique of the theory of socialism itself. She concludes with an enlightening comparison of the reassessments undertaken by Deng Xiaoping with those of Gorbachev, linking them to the divergent outcomes of reform and revolution in their respective countries.

Is corruption an inevitable part of the transition to a free-market economy? Yan Sun here examines the ways in which market reforms in the People's Republic of China have shaped corruption since 1978 and how corruption has in turn shaped those reforms. She suggests that recent corruption is largely a byproduct of post-Mao reforms, spurred by the economic incentives and structural opportunities in the emerging marketplace. Sun finds that the steady retreat of the state has both increased mechanisms for cadre misconduct and reduced disincentives against it. 
Chinese disciplinary offices, law enforcement agencies, and legal professionals compile and publish annual casebooks of economic crimes. The cases, processed in the Chinese penal system, represent offenders from party-state agencies at central and local levels as well as state firms of varying sizes and types of ownership. Sun uses these casebooks to illuminate the extent and forms of corruption in the People's Republic of China. Unintended and informal mechanisms arising from corruption may, she finds, take on a life of their own and undermine the central state's ability to implement its developmental policies, discipline its staff, enforce its regulatory infrastructure, and fundamentally transform the economy.

Corruption and Market in Contemporary China

Business & Money

Economics

Cornell University Press

This book provides a record of an important exhibition—Reinventing Tradition in the New World: The Arts of Gu Wenda, Wang Mansheng, Xu Bing, and Zhang Hongtu—held at Gettysburg College’s Schmucker Art Gallery in late 2004.Each of the featured artists has a distinctive style and voice, and the diversity of the objects in the catalogue is great, ranging from large stone slabs engraved with poetry to a tiny glass bubble containing only air. Despite these artistic divergences, the four artists are linked by cultural experiences. All grew up in socialist China and later immigrated to New York City. The artists also share a fascination with the power of language. In his or her own way, each artist is concerned with, in Katheryn M. Linduff’s phrasing, “words and their significance, whether conventional and readable or fictional and indecipherable.” Essays by Wang Ying, Yan Sun, and Regan Golden-McNerney, interviews with each of the artists, and a glossary of Chinese terms supplement this fully illustrated catalogue.

Reinventing Tradition in a New World: The Arts of Gu Wenda, Wang Mansheng, Xu Bing, and Zhang Hongtu

Ying, Wang

Gettysburg College

Yan Sun: Cross Culture, Cross Century

William and Elizabeth Hayden Museum of Americ

This volume examines the role of objects in the region north of early dynastic state centers, at the intersection of Ancient China and Eurasia, a large area that stretches from Xinjiang to the China Sea, from c.3000 BCE to the mid-eighth century BCE. This area was a frontier, an ambiguous space that lay at the margins of direct political control by the metropolitan states, where local and colonial ideas and practices were reconstructed transculturally. These identities were often merged and displayed in material culture. Types of objects, styles, and iconography were often hybrids or new to the region, as were the tomb assemblages in which they were deposited and found. Patrons commissioned objects that marked a symbolic vision of place and person and that could mobilize support, legitimize rule, and bind people together. Through close examination of key artifacts, this book untangles the considerable changes in political structure and cultural makeup of ancient Chinese states and their northern neighbors.

Ancient China and its Eurasian Neighbors: Artifacts, Identity and Death in the Frontier, 3000–700 BCE

Politics & Social Sciences

Linduff, Katheryn M.

Cao, Wei

Liu, Yuanqing

Archaeology

Cambridge University Press

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Books by SUN, Yan