Please select a topic around China, since my major is International Relations, maybe something like: the History of China’s Diplomacy, etc

And later I have to talk about the proposal’s references with my super adviser, so please find some books or journals or articals that I can find somewhere, do not find the sources like very old, like the book is write by 100 years ago, something like that. I will really appreciate it!! Please find 13-15 references would be perfect! Thank you very much. And about how to write this proposal please find in attachment. Please exactly follow the format that I attached.
You should provide information against all ten headings below, taking note of the advice posted against each section.

Name: Alex Thomson

Course: MA Politics

Date of initial enrollment (October or January cohort): October

Student ID: 123456789

Supervisor: James Bloggs
1. Proposed research question
(Supply a draft title for your dissertation. Make sure you are posing an analytical, not a descriptive, question – ‘why’, for example, is more analytical than ‘what’.)

“Why did Constructive Engagement fail? Explaining the failure of the Reagan Administration’s foreign policy towards the Republic of South Africa.”
2. Objective of the dissertation
(In one sentence, sum up what your dissertation is attempting to do.)

To account for the failure of the Reagan Administration’s foreign policy towards South Africa (1981-1986).

3. Aims of the dissertation
(Using short bullet points, outline what your dissertation will have to do to in order to reach your objective. Three or four aims are probably enough.)

• To identify the objectives and component elements of the Reagan Administration’s foreign policy of ‘Constructive Engagement’ towards South Africa
• To discern any internal (US government) source of weakness, undermining this policy
• To ascertain any external influences hindering the performance of this policy
• To rank, in importance, any explanations of failure found, as well as seeking links between the factors identified
4. Your dissertation’s position in the existing literature
(In approximately 300-400 words, briefly outline the debates that this dissertation will engage. What has been written on this topic previously? Are there different schools of thought involved? Who has said what, and when? Who do you agree with? Where will your dissertation fit into this literature? Don’t forget to footnote/cite each of your references.)

Between 1981 and 1986, US foreign policy towards South Africa sought to ‘constructively engage’ the apartheid government in Pretoria. Rather than isolating South Africa with punitive sanctions, the Reagan Administration argued that ‘gentle persuasion’, instead, would have a better chance of prompting South Africa to abandon apartheid (Crocker 1980, Crocker 1992). In 1986, however, the Reagan Administration was forced to terminate its Constructive Engagement policy. The US Congress, overriding a presidential veto, imposed a series of punitive sanctions on South Africa, via its Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act (Redden, 1988).
The dissertation seeks to explain this policy ‘u-turn’. Why did Constructive Engagement fail? Former officials from the Reagan Administration (the President, and Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Crocker, for example) blame the policy failure on the US Congress. They accuse the legislative branch of conducting “gesture politics”, playing to a domestic audience, rather than formulating a workable longer-term policy for South Africa (Reagan 1990, Crocker 1992). Other scholars point to the policy of Constructive Engagement itself. Thomson, for example, identifies areas of this policy that failed to be implemented (an absence of US contacts with the black opposition, for example). In this respect, policy ‘slippage’ could account for the demise of Constructive Engagement (Thomson, 1996).
Other explanations for the failure of Reagan’s South Africa policy can be found outside the US government. Robinson, for instance, points to US business interests unilaterally withdrawing from South Africa, undermining Constructive Engagement (1985). Finnegan looks at the role of the US media in building up public awareness on this issue, which prompted a surge in public opinion for the US federal government to ‘do something’, which Congress duly did (1986). However, it may be that Robert Price identifies the key reason why Constructive Engagement failed. It was the anti-apartheid opposition in South Africa itself that drew the rug from under the Reagan Administration’s feet. With the mid-1980s township uprisings, and the associated violence between police and protestors, it was impossible for the US government to maintain its call for continued ‘quite diplomacy’. It could not have friendly relations with a white-minority government, when this government was perpetrating racially motivated violence (Price, 1991).
This dissertation is about testing all the above explanations (Congressional ‘gesture politics’, policy slippage, business influence, media impact, and the influence of the township violence). My initial findings suggest that policy slippage left Constructive Engagement open to the fall-out from the township uprisings. In this vulnerable position, the South Africa policy of the Reagan Administration had no chance of surviving the mid-1980s domestic media storm, and the subsequent legislative reaction from the US Congress.

5. Bibliography
(Put your footnotes/citations from section 4, and possibly section 5, here. Only refer to sources discussed in these sections.)

• Crocker, Chester A. (1980) South Africa: strategy for change. Foreign Affairs. 80, 59(2), 324.
• Crocker, Chester A. High noon in southern Africa: making peace in a rough neighborhood. New York: Norton, 1992. 95.
• Finnegan, William (1986) Coming apart over apartheid: the story behind the Republican’s split on South Africa. Mother Jones. April/May. 19.
• Price, Robert M. (1991) The apartheid state in crisis: political transformation in South Africa, 1975-1990. New York: Oxford University Press. 195.
• Reagan, Ronald. (1990) An American life. London: Hutchinson.
• Redden, Thomas J. (1988) The U.S. Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986: anti-apartheid of anti-African National Congress? African Affairs. 87(349), 597.
• Robinson, Anthony (1985) U.S. business seeks change in apartheid. Financial Times (London). 21 March. 4.
• Thomson, Alex (1996) Incomplete Engagement: US foreign policy towards the Republic of South Africa, 1981-1988. Aldershot: Avebury.
6. Methodology
(In approximately 500 words, how will you go about this dissertation, meeting the aims and objective outlined above? What sources will you consult, and how and where will you do this? Where will you find relevant literature? What libraries/databases will you use? Do you need to do any fieldwork – questionnaire, interviews, experiments, etc.? If so, what form will this fieldwork take (Whom? How many participants? etc.)

My first task is a literature review. In terms of secondary sources, I will use Coventry University’s Lanchester Library as the base for my research. I have also arranged access to the collections of Birmingham University and Manchester University. To track down relevant items, I intend to use the catalogues of the above libraries, as well as the following electronic databases and abstracts: Academic Network, Social Science Everything, and Find it Here*. I will concentrate on finding appropriate books and journal articles, but will also seek out informed opinion from internet sources (via a Google search). An initial interrogation of the contents pages of past issues of the journals Foreign Policy and Foreign Affairs has already proved fruitful.
I will also use primary sources in my research. Of particular use will be two US State Department publications: The Foreign Relations of the United States (which reproduces original documents of the US government) and The Department of State Bulletin (which prints public statement of US officials). I will also consult the Congressional Hearings held in the 1980s on this subject. The State Department serials are available electronically, via Hein Online, while Congressional Hearings can be accessed from the webpage of the US Congress.
I have also made contact with James Bloggs, currently working at the US embassy in London, who has agreed to be interviewed. Mr. Bloggs was a State Department employee, working on ‘Constructive Engagement’ during the Reagan era. Dr Hilary Bloggins, Professor of Foreign Policy at Manchester University, an expert in this field, has also indicated I can talk to her about my research.
Supplementing these books, journal articles, primary sources and interviews, I also intend to read contemporary newspaper articles of the period. I will access the New York Times and Washington Post via the electronic portal: Newspaper Bank*. Additionally, I will visit the British Library’s Newspaper collection in Collingdale, London to consult the Johannesburg Star.
In terms of making sense of this material, I think I first have to find out exactly what Constructive Engagement was. There are two aspects to defining this policy: its stated aims and its implementation. The Administration’s public statements will reveal what Reagan intended to do in South Africa, while the documents published in the Foreign Relations of the United States and newspaper accounts will help me to ascertain what was done to meet these goals. I will be particular interested in if there was any policy ‘slippage’ – i.e. certain elements of Constructive Engagement, as publicly defined by the Administration, were not actually implemented.
Having found out what Constructive Engagement actually was, I can then go on to make an assessment about this policy’s failure. I will go through each of the potential reasons (Congressional ‘gesture politics’, policy slippage, business influence, media impact, and the influence of the township violence), on by one, seeing if there is evidence to support each suggested cause.
The final stage of the methodology, after the literature search, defining the policy, and testing each of the individual causes, will be to come to my conclusions. I will rank each of the causes in terms of its contribution to Constructive Engagement’s failure. I will also try to find links between the causes. In short, I will test my initial hypothesis that policy slippage left Constructive Engagement open to the fall-out from the township uprisings. In this vulnerable position, the Reagan Administration’s policy had no chance of surviving the mid-1980s domestic media storm, and the legislative reaction to this from the US Congress.

* These are fictitious sources. You should find out which abstracts are most relevant to your studies yourself. If you are unsure, ask at the Lanchester Library.

7. Structure
(How will you divide up the presentation of your research findings? You should list your draft chapter headings in this section).

1. Introduction
2. Constructive Engagement: the strategy and its goals
3. The implementation of Constructive Engagement and ‘policy slippage’
4. The township uprisings and Constructive Engagement’s failure
5. The loss of business confidence and Constructive Engagement’s failure
6. The US media and Constructive Engagement’s failure
7. The US Congress and Constructive Engagement’s failure
8. Conclusions

8. Research timetable
(Noting that the dissertation will need to be submitted in September, provide a timetable outlining when you will complete the various stages of your dissertation: e.g. the literature search, any fieldwork, each chapter, final draft, corrections, presentation, etc.. This may be presented as a series of bullet points, or why not use a Gantt chart?)

Activity A M J J A S
Feedback from supervisor on Research design X
Literature search and initial reading X X X
Write ch.2, and receive supervisory feedback X
Write ch.3, and receive supervisory feedback X
Write ch.4, and receive supervisory feedback X
Write ch.5, and receive supervisory feedback X
Write ch.6, and receive supervisory feedback X
Write ch.7, and receive supervisory feedback X
Write intro. & Conclusion, receive feedback X
Interviews* X
Write final draft X
References and proof reading X
Submit dissertation/ethics paperwork X
* It is up to you when you do your fieldwork/interviews/questionnaires/experiments. Pick a time that best fits your methodology. If you are unsure, seek the advice of your supervisor.

11. Ethics

ANSWER THESE THREE QUESTIONS YES NO

1
I have consulted the ethics documentation located on the university ethics website
https://ethics.coventry.ac.uk/App/default.aspx X

2
I have discussed the ethics of my proposed research with my supervisor X

3
I have sought, or will within the next month seek, full ethical approval for my research project. X
There is no need to submit the actual ethics approval with this research design, but this documentation will be required for the successful completion of the dissertation.
9. How will you utilise the help of your supervisor?
(How often do you intend to meet your supervisor? What do you expect from him/her? What do you think they expect from you?)

I intend to make use of my supervisor by seeking advice when necessary.

In particular, I think a supervisor’s input will be useful on the formulation of fieldwork tools (interview questions, questionnaires, etc.), and by regularly receiving feedback from them with respect to completed written work (this research design, for example, and completed chapters). I understand that I can only ask my supervisor to read one draft of each chapter, but I think this will invaluable for improving the finings of my research. I intend to submit each chapter as it is completed.

I think my supervisor will expect me to undertake the research and writing for my dissertation over a sustained period, and not attempt to do everything in the last couple of months. I doubt if they will be happy to give advice or feedback at the last moment, if little contact has been made prior to this date. Supervisors will only read my chapters if these are submitted at regular intervals, and in good time. It is unlikely they will read a whole dissertation, all at once.

[You are welcome to copy section 10 above verbatim, as long as you subscribe to what it says!]