Middle Kingdom & Empire of the Rising Sun
Japan and China have been rivals and intermittent antagonists for more than a millennium. Until the late nineteenth century, China was the more powerful, while Japan had the upper hand for the next century. China’s recent resurgence has emboldened it even as Japan perceives itself falling behind, exacerbating long-standing historical frictions between the two. In this talk on her new book (Oxford University Press, June 2016), Dreyer provides a historical overview of one of the world’s great civilizational rivalries and illuminates key issues affecting the geopolitics of the region today: economic rivalry, disparate memories of World War II, resurgent nationalism, military factors, Taiwan, and globalization.
June Teufel Dreyer is a Senior Fellow in FPRI’s Asia Program and Professor of Political Science at the University of Miami, Coral Gables. Formerly a senior Far East Specialist at the Library of Congress, she has also served as Asia policy advisor to the Chief of Naval Operations and as a commissioner of the United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission established by the U.S. Congress. She received her Ph.D. from Harvard University. The ninth edition of here textbook China’s Political System: Modernization and Tradition was published in 2015.