Qi Zheng

The interest in Carl Schmitt's political theory among Chinese scholars can be demonstrated by the publication of Schmitt's many works in Chinese,1 as well as the publication of much secondary literature about him since the beginning of the twenty-first century. The introduction of Schmitt's political theory in China has provoked a huge controversy about the significance of his theory to China. No other political philosopher whose theory has been introduced into China has caused as much controversy as Schmitt.2This essay will explore the justification for studying Schmitt's theory in China. It will reveal the reasons why political philosophers who…

Carl Schmitt's political and legal theory has been subject to criticism by Chinese scholars. One of the criticisms is based on the judgment that there are uncomfortable similarities between Schmitt's and Mao's theories. Due to the similarities between Schmitt and Mao, many Chinese scholars argue that it is morally wrong to rely on Schmitt's political theory in contemporary China. In contrast to this view, this book develops a new way of reading and benefiting from Schmitt's legal and political theories. It explores Schmitt's theories from the perspective of what Zheng refers to as 'the politics of transition'. This book shows that Schmitt's theory can be beneficial for filling in the details of the politics of transition. Carl Schmitt, Mao Zedong and the Politics of Transition also contributes to identifying the real theoretical relationship between Schmitt and Mao from the perspective of the politics of transition. It shows that although there are some similarities between Schmitt's and Mao's theories, there are fundamental differences as well.

To better determine the history of modern birds, we performed a genome-scale phylogenetic analysis of 48 species representing all orders of Neoaves using phylogenomic methods created to handle genome-scale data.We recovered a highly resolved tree that confirms previously controversial sister or close relationships.We identified the first divergence in Neoaves, two groups we named Passerea and Columbea, representing independent lineages of diverse and convergently evolved land and water bird species. Among Passerea, we infer the common ancestor of core landbirds to have been an apex predator and confirm independent gains of vocal learning. Among Columbea, we identify pigeons and flamingoes as belonging to sister clades. Even with whole genomes, some of the earliest branches in Neoaves proved challenging to resolve, which was best explained by massive protein-coding sequence convergence and high levels of incomplete lineage sorting that occurred during a rapid radiation after the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction event about 66 million years ago.