Many countries revel in their victories, but China is driven by the humiliations it has suffered at the hands of foreigners over the past two centuries. Through 11 biographical sketches of Chinese intellectuals and political leaders — Wei Yuan, Sun…

The Chinese dream, as Orville Schell and John Delury persuasively argue, has been to recapture the wealth and power of dynasties past. via The Dance of Superpowers | John Feffer.

“Xi Jinping is a very tough, muscular, nationalist leader whose toolbox is taken from earlier Mao periods,” Schell said in a phone interview. According to Schell, Xi’s preference for assertive leadership on the world stage means that China is “going to accept much less hectoring and bullying” from the rest of the world, perceived or otherwise. “They are going to be much more defiant.”

Orville Schell, a longtime China observer at the Asia Society in New York, said Mr. Xi’s statements on the foreign news media, the first time he had publicly addressed the issue, were a “dash of cold water.” “We had thought…

Mr. Xi’s comments formalize a shift in the Chinese government’s approach, said Orville Schell, the director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society, and a longtime scholar on China. “There is a fundamental contrast between Western notions…

“It used to be that everyone thought ‘Oh, we’ll get in there, get some capitalism going, and China will flip eventually.’ Well that hasn’t happened,” said Orville Schell, director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the New York-based Asia…

Orville Schell of the Asia Society described it in harsher terms. “Obama’s last visit — I was in China at the time — was really like swimming in liquid nitrogen. It would not be good to have that happen again.”

In “Modern Meat,” an examination of America’s high-tech animal-production system, published in 1984, the journalist and hog farmer Orville Schell admitted that he felt silly, when ordering pork in a restaurant, asking about the life of the pig. “How many restaurant managers are besieged by customers worried about how the meat they are eating is raised?” he wrote. “It is a subject most people would rather not think about, particularly while dining.”

Mr. Xi’s “rule of law” looks more like the “rule by law” advocated by the Legalists, said Orville Schell, director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at Asia Society in New York. Mr. Xi wants party power to be applied…