As mentioned in the syllabus, you will be conducting a research project over the course
of the semester on Chinas relations with a specific country and how that relationship may have
evolved over the past twenty years as China is rising. The paper based on your research will
focus in particular on the history of Chinas relations with that country, on the economic aspects
of that relationship over the last twenty or so years, and on the political (and potentially
military/security) aspects of the relationship over the past twenty years. These three sections of
the final research paper will be due in draft version at different times of the semester, as stated in
the syllabus. Details for the second and third sections will be provided at a later date. Here are
the details for the historical section.
The historical section of the paper will cover Chinas relations with your country up to
(and including) 1976. Thus, the historical section will cover Chinas relations with the country
during the imperial era (up to 1911), the Republican era (1911-1949), and the Maoist era of the
PRC (1949-1976). China may not have had relations with your selected country during all of
these periods, so your research will have to discover whether they did or not. The purpose of this
historical section is to provide some background and context for the evolution of Chinas
relations with your country as it has emerged as a global great power (since 2000).
This historical section will be approximately 3 to 6 pages in length (depends on how
extensive Chinas historical relations were with your country…), double-spaced, standard one
inch margins, 12 point font, etc. This paper is due at 9:00 am on Monday, February 7, and it
may be submitted either in hard copy or via email (please send it as an attachment not as a
shared file!!!! I cannot always open shared files).
As for citation method, you may use whichever method you are most comfortable with.
If you use APA or MLA, or some other method that uses in-text citations, be sure to provide the
list of references that you cite. If you are using Chicago or another method that utilizes footnotes
or endnotes, please remember that you do not need to use the full author and title after the first
time you cite the work: you can use a shortened version. If you need an example, let me know
and I will provide some. Also, citations should be to the actual work, not merely to some long
URL that houses the article or source. A long Amazon Web Service (AWS) URL that does not
include the author, title of the work, name of the journal or web site, etc., for the cited work is
not acceptable. If you have questions, please ask me.
Your paper (historical relations section) should have an introductory paragraph that
previews your analysis of the historical relationship, that you then detail and analyze in the body
of the paper. It should also have a short concluding paragraph that sums up the analysis in this
section. The introductory paragraph should not say something like This paper will explore
Chinas relations with Korea during the imperial, Republican, and Maoist communist eras to see
how China interacted with Korea (and South Korea after 1948). If this is all that your Intro
says, then this language suggests that you have not yet done the analysis to understand the
historical relationship. Instead, your introductory paragraph should have language more along
the lines of: As we will see, Chinas relationship with Korea, and then South Korea for the
Maoist communist era, has seen many twists and turns, but running through much of this the
relationship is the importance of Korea to Chinas view of its role in the world and to Chinese
security. Korea was Chinas last remaining tributary state, and was viewed as a buffer against
the expanding Japanese in the late 1800s. Chinas relationship with Korea itself was subsumed
into Chinas relations with the Japanese empire after Japan annexed Korea in 1910. And after
World War II, South Korea was seen as a threat by the Peoples Republic of China which
supported North Korea against South Korea and the United States including Chinas
involvement in the Korean War. Notice how this type of language previews the analysis that
you have already done. Remember: a research paper is the product and write-up of your
research; it is not the research itself. You conduct the research, analyze the information,
and then write the paper.
In terms of research, I know the student penchant to sit in your room and utilize only
online journal articles and the like for your information. While there will be plenty of journal
articles to help you (and yes, you should use them), you should also head into Cunningham
Memorial Library and look through some of the books, because a lot of the good research on Chinas historical relations with other countries (or lands that became these countries) will be
