Issue: 2025: Vol. 24, No. 2

Editor’s Note

Article Author(s)
James Schiffman

Dr. James Schiffman is an educator and journalist, most recently as a faculty member on the Spring 2023 voyage of Semester at Sea and as an associate professor of Communication at Georgia College & State University. He began teaching after a long career in journalism, which included stints in Beijing and Seoul as Bureau Chief for The Asian Wall Street Journal. He earned a Ph.D. in Communication at Georgia State University in 2012. His dissertation critically compared narratives about China, Chinese history, and Chinese culture that emerged from the CCTV and NBC broadcasts of the Opening Ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Dr. Schiffman is Editor of China Currents.

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This issue of China Currents once again offers a wide-ranging look at significant issues involving China, some of which are prominent in the public discourse on China and some of which are more obscure but nevertheless important.

We begin with the latter category. Dr. Thomas Rotnem looks at a little-known aspect of cooperation between China and Russia — in the Arctic — and he elaborates on China’s ambitions in that frigid part of the world.

Dr. Dalton Lin shifts the focus to Taiwan, a potential flashpoint in U.S.-China relations. He offers some ideas about how Taiwan should approach relations with the United States under second Trump administration.

Next we have two pieces that speak to the complicated relations between the U.S., which has been the dominant world power since World War II and China, the rising superpower.

Dr. Fei-ling Wang argues that the United State must win the global competition with China for power and leadership as he offers a brief summary of his recent book The China Record, the third volume in a trilogy on China.

Dr. Nick Zeller has a different take. He sees the United State in decline and China on the rise but draws on Immanuel Kant to suggest that the global transition that he sees underway need not inevitably result in calamity.

Finally and on a lighter but still significant note, Dr. Zhuoyi Wang reviews the Chinese blockbuster comedy Her Story, and explains how it uses humor to challenge traditional gender norms.