Analysis of Contemporary Chinese Society (CHIN20021 / CHIN30006)
Analysis of Contemporary Chinese Society
CHIN20021 / CHIN30006
Reflective essay and questions
All students who are taking Analysis of Contemporary Chinese Society are required to write a
reflective essay. The essay is worth 40% of the subject assessment. Students should also note the
followings:
 Your essay should be around 1,500 to 2,000 words in English or 2,500 to 3,000 in Chinese.
 The essay can be written in either Chinese or English.
 The essay must be based on at least four academic publications, or four analytical essays
if no academic publications are available.
 You only need to do one of the given questions listed below.
 The essay should be submitted in by the end of Week 8 and marked essays will be
available online at the beginning of Week 11.
 Please submit your essay online via the link for Reflective Essay, which is listed on the
Assignments page. If you are not familiar with the LMS Canvas, please Google how to
upload a file as an assignment on the LMS Canvas.
 Please remember to write down your name on your essay!
Please note that the LMS Canvas has Turnitin integrated inside it and that make sure you write
the essay in your own words.
Reflective essay
Reflective writing is aimed at helping you examine both the knowledge that you are learning and
the analytical skills that you are developing in the subject. The latter is far more important than
the former. There are several ways to write a reflective essay. In general, a reflective essay is
different from a research essay, and it is a minor or small-scale critical literature review.
Therefore, you must be critical and analytical.
You are expected to read and show your understanding about different explanations of the topic
or the issue that you have decided to reflect upon and to analyse the differences. You are not
expected to go too far beyond four or five academic publications, BUT you are expected to
identify the pitfalls of the research publications that you have found and to indicate how to
address the problems.
To identify shortcomings and gaps in the current understanding of the issue, you also need to
provide or mention additional three to four pieces of documented evidence, which are not
necessarily academic, to support your argument or your critical comments on those research
publications. For example, some media reports or other surveys have revealed some evidence
that contradict certain arguments or interpretations presented in academic publications.
To a degree, writing a reflective essay is the practice of writing a minor or short critical literature
review, which will prepare you for your next research essay. Reflective writing involves several
steps. If you are not familiar with it, the following are key suggestions:
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Analysis of Contemporary Chinese Society (CHIN20021 / CHIN30006)
First, you need to choose one of the given topics, listed on Page 3 of this document, based on
your own reading interests and the availability of research publications. Please note that you do
not need to use your own topic, which will not only give readers the impression that you are
copying from other published sources, but also affect your critical and analytical reflection and
writing. Once the question for your essay is chosen, you need to briefly explain the question that
you choose to reflect and demonstrate your understanding of that specific issue and how
knowledge on the issue or topic has developed so far by academic researchers, or by other
educated professionals in the case that no academic publications have been produced.
Second, you need to briefly explain your strategy for responding to the question. That is, you also
need to briefly describe what you will be trying to achieve in your response, what needs to be
done to accomplish it, and what should be done first and so on.
Third, you should then turn attention to reading some academic writings, such as academic
journal articles or academic book chapters. Please note that you should read academic
publications, not general reading materials. This is because you are earning a degree from a well-
recognised research-intensive university, and you need to show your appreciation of the main
points of the serious readings of serious scholarly publications, especially your intellectual
mastery of the differences between them, to which authors and titles need to be referred.
Structurally, this part and the next two parts will be the main body of your essay, which should be
no less than 70%, or even up to 75% of the total length of the essay.
To reflect on what you are reading and learning, your own preconceptions and presumptions can
be incorporated into the discussion. You can compare them with what you have read and learned,
and identify a few key aspects or points, laying the basis for developing some critical ideas in the
next stage.
Please note that special attention needs to be paid to the selection of academic publications and
that it will make your reading and writing difficult if selecting and reading the research articles
that discuss the issue from the same perspective or according to a similar logic, which will make it
more difficult than otherwise to figure out differences in perspectives and arguments.
Fourthly, you should reflect on the issues raised in the previous stage and outline your conjecture,
which must be new in terms of being different from what you have read, or slightly different from
what you have read, and worth exploring. Your conjecture will serve as a new perspective of
looking at the topic and guide you towards further discussion of the issue.
Lastly, reflective writing requires an analysis of what you have read and learned, how they are
different from your presumptions, and to what extent the texts and ideas that you have
encountered provide you with a new perspective on the topic. In this part, you can also include
the implications of the analysis or suggestions about questions that remain to be answered.
Evaluation
Your essay will be evaluated based on:
 Whether the essay is handed in on time.
 Whether it is of appropriate length with sufficient references.
 Whether the essay represents a genuine, good faith effort to address some aspects of the
question discussed. Please beware of Turnitin.
 How well it is written.
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Analysis of Contemporary Chinese Society (CHIN20021 / CHIN30006)
 How well the essay shows that you can reflect critically and constructively on the
question.
Questions for your reflective essay
To help you write the essay, students can limit your reading and writing to one of the following
questions:
长时间以来，很多人都认为毛泽东是一位享有绝对领导权威的领袖，不喜欢他的人
认为他是一位独裁者。这种个人崇拜和背后的简单思维方式还直接、间接地暗示着
毛泽东领导的执政党是一个缺乏活力、缺乏党内制衡机制的新统治集团。但所有这
些都似乎不完全符合毛泽东时代的历史事实。重新分析、准确看待这段历史非常重
要，关系到如何看待中国社会的运转和其中的一些重要机制。
20世纪 50年代末以后，毛泽东不仅受到党内一些人的冷落，甚至他的治国理念和
一些决策还受到他在军队的同事和追随者们数次反对和制约。这种情况使他在他政
治生涯的最后十几年一直处于焦虑之中。毛泽东的治国理念和一些决策在 1958年
之后至少受到中国军方领导人的四次挑战或制约，其中包括：
1. 1959年，时任国防部长的彭德怀元帅在“1959年庐山会议”上提出了对大跃
进、人民公社一些措施的批评。– Peng Dehuai / P’eng Teh-huai / P’eng Te-huai;
the Great Leap Forward; the People’s Commune; and the Lushan Conference in
1959.
2. 1967年 2月，四位元帅 “ ”和三位副总理在所谓的 二月逆流 中联合反对文化
大革命的各种做法。 – The February Countercurrent / the February Adverse
Current / Eryue niliu.
3. 1967年 7月，中国人民解放军武汉军区官兵在 1967年 7月 20日的武汉事
件中直接表达了他们对文化大革命 “ ”中处理地方 夺权 做法的强烈不满。– The
Wuhan Incident / the 7/20 Incident / the July 20th Incident / the Wuhan Mutiny;
Chen Zaidao / Ch’en Tsai-tao.
4. 1971年 9月，毛泽东的第二位、并在党章中认定的唯一接班人林彪元帅出
走，不再支持毛泽东的一些政治决策，并于 1971年 9月 13日出走时因飞
机失事身亡。– The Lin Bao Incident / the 9/13 Incident / the Lin Piao Incident /
the Lin Piao Affair; Lin Biao / Lin Piao.
请（1）选定上述一次事件，（2）搜索、阅读有关的中、英文学术研究文献，
（3）分析研究者们是如何观察、分析某一次事件的。并请注意：研究者们采取了
什么分析角度？他们的看法有何异同？你如何看待他们的分析？他们的分析可以怎
样得到补充和提高？
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