The Bonds of Brotherhood: New Evidence of Sino-North Korean Exchanges, 1950-1954

Drawing on recently declassified documents from the archive of the Foreign Ministry of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), this article looks at China’s relationship with North Korea during and immediately after the Korean War. Although previous scholarship has touched on PRC–North Korean military ties during the war, this article is the first in-depth analysis of issues that are less well understood, notably China’s efforts to cope with a huge influx of refugees from North Korea, the PRC’s economic assistance during the war and in the early postwar reconstruction, and Chinese educational and ideological support for North Korean professionals and party cadres. The article shows that the extensive military coordination between Beijing and Pyongyang was only one way in which the war brought North Korea and the PRC into a closer relationship

L'Asse Tripartito Italia-Germania- Giappone e la Cina

Germany, Italy and Japan were engaged in China from the turn of the 20th century to WWII. However, they formed an anti-Chinese alliance only at the final stage of their presence there, when Japan assumed an undisputed role of leader in the region. Despite its alliance with the Axis powers, Japan never implemented racial laws against the Jews in China. All of them took part in the Boxer Upraising suppression and received as a consequence extraterritorial rights and concessions. Moreover, Japan won the war against China in 1895 and transformed itself from a tributary country of China into an imperialistic power. It took possession of Taiwan and in the 1930s established a puppet government in Manchuria.Germany followed different route obtaining as indemnity for the murders of two missionaries the control of the Shandong province, which was later expanded thanks to the anti-Boxer coalition's victory. However, Germany lost all possessions when China entered WWI. The issue of Shandong was finally resolved at the Conference for Disarmament hold in Washington in 1921-2. Japan failed to gain ex-Germany territories. Finally, Italy arrived in the Far East at the turn of the century but was not very interested in the oriental colonialism to the same extent it was interested in Africa. Tianjin was its only concession in China, and it took almost a decade before a subvention to arrive from the Italian government for its development.In the 1920s and 1930s Germany and Italy engaged in successful diplomatic, commercial and military relationships with China. In fact, both were considered China's partners thanks to their experts at the service of the Chinese government. On the other hand, Japan position was opposite to them, because of its plans of aggression towards China which was to be transformed into “the natural extension” of the mainland. In 1935 Italy declared war on Ethiopia and abandoned the seat at the League of Nations. China interpreted the Italian aggression as the endorsement of Japan's politics towards China in Manchuria, and the relations between the two countries were broken off. After that Italy supported Wang Jingwei's puppet government during the Japanese occupation of China. Germany followed the same path in 1937, when it was evident that the Japanese were playing the leading role in the region, and decided to ally with Wang Jingwei too. Both Italy and Germany decided also to recognise the Manzhuguo and established diplomatic relations, definitively turning their backs on the old Chinese ally.The Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis sealed the alliance among the three countries, and it confirmed Japan as the leading power in the region. Nevertheless Japan did not apply the racial law against the Jews in China.

State power matters: power, the state and political struggle in the post-war American novel

This article is concerned with resituating the state at the centre of the analytical stage and, concomitantly, with drawing attention to the dangers of losing sight of the state as a locus of power. It seeks to uncover the relationship between two related lines of critical inquiry: Marxist and Foucauldian theories of the state; and the attempts by three postwar American novelist (Ken Kesey, William Burroughs and E.L. Doctorow) to determine the nature and extent of this power and to consider under what conditions political struggle might be possible. It argues that such a move is needed because recent critical analysis has been too preoccupied by corporeal micropolitics and global macropolitics, and that the postwar American novel can help us in this move because it is centrally concerned with the repressive potentiality of the US state. It maintains that the resuscitation of Marxist state theories in early 1970s and a debate between Poulantzas and Foucault is intriguingly foreshadowed and even critiqued by these novels. Consequently, it concludes that these novels constitute an unrecognized pre-history of what would become one of the key intellectual debates of the late twentieth century: an engagement between Marxist and post-structuralist conceptions of the power and resistance.

rbcL sequences reveal multiple cryptic introductions of the Japanese red alga Polysiphonia harveyi.

In Europe, the last 20 years have seen a spectacular increase in accidental introductions of marine species, but it has recently been suggested that both the actual number of invaders and their impacts have been seriously underestimated because of the prevalence of sibling species in marine habitats. The red alga Polysiphoniaharveyi is regarded as an alien in the British Isles and Atlantic Europe, having appeared in various locations there during the past 170 years. Similar or conspecific populations are known from Atlantic North America and Japan. To choose between three competing hypotheses concerning the origin of P. harveyi in Europe, we employed rbcL sequence analysis in conjunction with karyological and interbreeding data for samples and isolates of P. harveyi and various congeners from the Pacific and North Atlantic Oceans. All cultured isolates of P. harveyi were completely interfertile, and there was no evidence of polyploidy or aneuploidy. Thus, this biological species is both morphologically and genetically variable: intraspecific rbcL divergences of up to 2.1% are high even for red algae. Seven rbcL haplotypes were identified. The four most divergent haplotypes were observed in Japanese samples from Hokkaido and south-central Honshu, which are linked by hypothetical 'missing' haplotypes that may be located in northern Honshu. These data are consistent with Japan being the centre of diversity and origin for P. harveyi. Two non-Japanese lineages were linked to Hokkaido and Honshu, respectively. A single haplotype was found in all North Atlantic and Mediterranean accessions, except for North Carolina, where the haplotype found was the same as that invading in New Zealand and California. The introduction of P. harveyi into New Zealand has gone unnoticed because P. strictissima is a morphologically indistinguishable native sibling species. The sequence divergence between them is 4–5%, greater than between some morphologically distinct red algal species. Two different types of cryptic invasions of P. harveyi have therefore occurred. In addition to its introduction as a cryptic sibling species in New Zealand, P. harveyi has been introduced at least twice into the North Atlantic from presumed different source populations. These two introductions are genetically and probably also physiologically divergent but completely interfertile.