Zhu Qian presents a comprehensive study highlighting the key theories and practices in urban and social development processes and provides guidance on how to understand both the parallels and differences that these reveal. Utilizing a cross-sectoral and multi-scalar examination of property rights in a property-led urban environment, the book illustrates increasingly complex interactions between state and non-state actors and examines the characteristics and consequences of rural-urban land conversion. It further analyses the impacts of resettled villagers' adaptation to urban society and the role of property rights in China's recent high-profile urban-rural integrated development.

This insightful book will ensure a thorough grasp of the pertinent issues for scholars, researchers and practitioners within the fields of urban planning, human geography and land economics. It will also provide a more general systemic understanding for graduate students interested in the recent challenges and strategies in a property rights regime with strong state intervention.

This book provides a feminist, critical study of how gender power relations are played out through and across multiple mediated arenas in contemporary Jordan. It departs from an understanding of women's status in Jordan as a highly charged subject, and a view of the media as not just a locale where tensions play out, but also an important arena for contestation and resistance. The book examines the dynamic relationship between women and the media in Jordan as it manifests at three key levels: labour, representation, and activism. To do so, it engages with wider issues: the political economy of the media, regulatory and legal frameworks, Jordanian women's economic participation, the history of Jordanian feminist activism, gender-based violence, and the political context of the Arab Spring in Jordan. Through choice case studies, the book unpacks the complex role of legal, political, and social factors in shaping women's relationship to the media. It centres women's experiences and highlights their agency, disobedience, and efforts to negotiate and resist the limitations imposed by Jordanian patriarchy and, in doing so, it illustrates how gender, power, and resistance interplay through and within Jordanian media.

In 1967 Israel occupied the western section of Syria's Golan Heights, expelling 130,000 residents and leaving only a few thousand Arab inhabitants clustered in several villages. Sometimes characterised as the 'forgotten occupation', the western Golan Heights have been transformed by Israeli colonisation, including the appropriation of land and water resources, economic development and extensive military use.

This landmark volume is the first academic study in English of Arab politics and culture in the occupied Golan Heights. It focuses on an indigenous community, known as the Jawlanis, and their experience of everyday colonisation and resistance to settler colonisation. Chapters cover how governance is carried out in the Golan, from Israel's use of the education system and collective memory, to its development of large-scale wind turbines which are now a symbol of Israeli encroachment. To illustrate the ways in which the current regime of Israeli rule has been contested, there are chapters on the six-month strike of 1982, youth mobilisation in the occupied Golan, Palestinian solidarity movements, and the creation of Jawlani art and writing as an act of resistance.

Rich in ethnographic detail and with chapters from diverse disciplines, the book is unique in bringing together Jawlani, Palestinian and UK researchers. The innovative format - with shorter 'reflections' from young Arab researchers, activists and lawyers that respond to more traditional academic chapters - establishes a bold new 'de-colonial' approach.

This book explores the phenomenon of total power in East Asia, with particular attention to China, Korea, and Japan. It shows how total power enables an examination of regional experience as a part of global context in order to demarcate the connections with other countries and regions that have similar political cultures, such as those in Central Asia, the Middle East, and East Africa. Moreover, it elucidates that the phenomenon of total power unpacks the interrelations not only between different countries, but also between political, economic, religious, or cultural aspects of the region as a whole, and of each country in particular. This book takes East Asia as a classic example of where total power has achieved the highest forms of development during traditional periods in the form of absolute economic dependence of society on the state, ideologically enshrined by a system of moral obligations toward supreme power that allowed for the establishment of a monopoly on forced labour, and the appropriation and distribution of social products. The author emphasizes the importance of exploring the tradition of total power with reference to the ongoing global crisis of European democracy. In doing so, the book shows that democratization has not brought qualitative changes to the political culture of East Asia. An essential interdisciplinary read for scholars studying political science, particularly East-West relations, this book situates East Asian political culture within a global context.

This book scrutinizes the frequently ignored agency of Global South sub-national actors in their interactions with China, using a multidisciplinary approach and eleven case studies. Contributors examine China's presence in the Global South on a country-by-country basis, analyzing how various non-state and sub-state actors are responding to the rise of China and whether they are attracted by the cooperation models that China proposes or deterred by its new assertiveness. Contributions cover diverse and heterogeneous geographies of the Global South, ranging from Papua-New Guinea to Argentina and from Madagascar to the Russian Far East. Examining such diverse cases, contributors focus on two interrelated questions: What is the actual economic, political, and social impact of China's growing presence in the Global South? And, critically, how do the citizens of the Global South understand and interpret China's rise? Taken together, the case studies develop a comprehensive picture of a complex and sometimes problematic process of China's inclusion into the economic, social, and political realities of the Global South.

This book identifies and fills the gaps in the existing literature on China's rise by offering a nuanced perspective on China's relations with the countries of the Global South that captures such variables as social context, intersubjective meanings, and identities. By focusing China's relations with the Global South, it also provides an important addition to the literature on international politics of development and China's role in the transformation of the South-South cooperation.

In this book, Barney Walsh presents an in-depth study of China's involvement in East Africa through specific focus on President Museveni of Uganda who has been uniquely influential in utilising China's presence to shape regional security dynamics in his favour. Focussing primarily on the period 2010-2015, Walsh places the spotlight on the 'Coalition of the Willing' formed between Uganda, Kenya and Rwanda, who undertook high-profile, exciting but controversial regional integration projects without Tanzania and Burundi. Key to those efforts were Chinese-funded mega-infrastructure projects, such as the Standard Gauge Railway and Uganda's oil pipeline.

Walsh's analysis of the East African Community (EAC) reveals China's role in ongoing security issues related to terrorism, resulting from the country's role in small arms and light weapons (SALW) proliferation and the global ivory trade. Additionally, China is heavily implicated in the region's 'oil sector', as it is a market for oil, involved in developing the sector, and a key partner in mega-infrastructure construction. Throughout this, though the EAC as an institution has been trying to stabilise regional security dynamics and strengthen its institutional role, it has been unduly influenced by the personalities and presence of key African leaders. Here, Museveni's role in such processes has been crucial, as he has made great efforts to utilise Chinese engagement in order to shape regional processes.

"This book provides the first book-lengthy study focusing on Artificial Intelligence (AI) with Chinese characteristics, in line with China's open ambition of becoming an AI superpower by 2030. China's unique domestic politics has developed distinct characteristics for its AI approach. By analysing national strategy, security and governance aspects of AI in China, this book argues that China's AI approach is sophisticated and multifaceted, and it has brought about both considerable benefits and challenges to China.

First, many characterize China's AI approach as a nationally concerted top-down geopolitical strategy to advance Beijing's unified objective. This book argues that this view is mistaken. It shows that China's AI politics is largely shaped by economically rather than geopolitically motivated domestic stakeholders. In addition, China's national AI plan is an upgrade of existing local AI initiatives to the national level, reflecting a bottom-up development.Thus, China's AI strategy is more of a political manifesto rather than a concrete policy plan.

The second part of the book discusses how the Chinese central government has been securitizing AI in order to mobilize local states, market actors, intellectuals and the general public. This security discourse is built on China's historical anxieties about technology, regime security needs and the growing tension caused by great power competition. Despite its help in convincing domestic actors, however, this securitization trend may undermine key AI objectives.

The third part of the book studies the Chinese governance approach to the use of AI. It argues that China's bold AI practices are part of its broad and incoherent adaptation strategy to governance by digital means. AI is part of a digital technology package that the Chinese authoritarian regime has actively employed not only to improve public services but also to strengthen its authoritarian governance. While China's AI progress benefits from its unique political and social environment, its ambitious AI plan contains considerable risks. China's approach is gambling on its success in (a) delivering a booming AI economy, (b) ensuring a smooth social transformation to the age of AI, and (c) proving ideological superiority of its authoritarian and communist values.

This book suggests that a more accurate understanding of AI with Chinese characteristics is essential in order to inform the debate regarding what lessons can be learnt from China's AI approach and how to respond to China's rise as the AI leader if not superpower."