Peter Hays Gries

Bio: Peter Hays Gries is an academic researcher from University of Oklahoma. The author has contributed to research in topics: China & Nationalism. The author has an hindex of 25, co-authored 72 publications receiving 1883 citations. Previous affiliations of Peter Hays Gries include University of Manchester & University of Colorado Boulder.

The Spectre of Communism in US China Policy: Bipartisanship in the American Subconscious

Abstract: Recent survey research suggests that, on average, Americans of all political stripes hold more positive attitudes towards the Chinese people than they do towards the Chinese government. This tendency appears more pronounced, however, among Republicans and conservatives, who are significantly more negative about the Chinese government than Democrats and liberals. 1 What best explains these two findings? In the wake of the January 2010 ‘Google Incident’ and the Obama administration’s announcement of continued arms sales to Taiwan, a February 1st People’s Daily Online editorial declared that ‘Cold War thinking’ continues to bias Americans against China. American ideology, it argued, is imbued with a ‘deeply-rooted hostility against and fear of ... communism’. 2 After 30 years of reform and opening, China today is arguably communist in name only. Could it be that communism is nonetheless what best explains American attitudes that are more negative towards the Chinese government than towards the Chinese people? Bipartisan American ambivalence about the Chinese government may stem in part from a common Liberalism, a celebration of individual freedom set against the idea of tyrannies or despotisms of either the left (communism) or right (fascism). Indeed, communism and fascism are often conflated in the American mind as totalitarianism—total state control and total loss of individual liberty.

China's Rise: A Review Essay

Abstract: Given the polarized nature of the current American debate over China's rise, the 2007 publication of three excellent books on the subject is both timely and welcome. Bates Gill, Iain Johnston, and Susan Shirk are three of the most respected American experts on Chinese foreign policy, and they arrive at a common, cautiously optimistic conclusion: China is not a revisionist power and conflict with the US is not inevitable. Yet conflict remains a possibility. Gill, Shirk, and Johnston have produced timely and valuable books that should contribute to the maturation of US debate over a US China policy for the twenty-first century.

Thinking fast and slow.

Abstract: In 1974 an article appeared in Science magazine with the dry-sounding title “Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases” by a pair of psychologists who were not well known outside their discipline of decision theory. In it Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman introduced the world to Prospect Theory, which mapped out how humans actually behave when faced with decisions about gains and losses, in contrast to how economists assumed that people behave. Prospect Theory turned Economics on its head by demonstrating through a series of ingenious experiments that people are much more concerned with losses than they are with gains, and that framing a choice from one perspective or the other will result in decisions that are exactly the opposite of each other, even if the outcomes are monetarily the same. Prospect Theory led cognitive psychology in a new direction that began to uncover other human biases in thinking that are probably not learned but are part of our brain’s wiring.

Human Nature and the Social Order

Abstract: “WHAT can men do, what do they do, and what do they want to do ?”—these are the uestions that Prof. Thorndike seeks to answer in a very comprehensive and elaborate treatise. His undertaking is inspired by the belief that man has the possibility of almost complete control of his fate if only he will be guided by science, and that his failures are attributable to ignorance or folly. The main approach is through biological psychology, but all the social sciences are appealed to and utilized in an effort to deal with the human problem as a whole. The relative immaturity of the sciences dealing with man is continually stressed, but it is claimed that they provide a body of facts and principles which are “far above zero knowledge”, and that even now they are capable of affording valuable guidance in the shaping of public policy. Human Nature and the Social Order By E. L. Thorndike. Pp. xx + 1020. (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1940.) 18s. net.

Why Men Rebel

Abstract: Why Men Rebel was first published in 1970 on the heels of a decade of political violence and protest not only in remote corners of Africa and Southeast Asia, but also at home in the United States. Forty years later, the world is riveted on uprisings in the Middle East, and the United States has been overtaken by a focus on international terrorism and a fascination with citizen movements at home and abroad. Do the arguments of 1970 apply today? Why Men Rebel lends new insight into contemporary challenges of transnational recruitment and organization, multimedia mobilization, and terrorism.