To whom it may concern:I am [교수이름], a professor at the [학교이름] and adviser of [본인이름]. I am recommending Mr. [본인이름] for admission to your graduate program.Mr. [본인이름] is good at communicating in foreign languages such as Chinese and English. He was very well trained in debating and learning in English among the multinational students and professors in our school. He also has experience in free discussion in Chinese with the professors and students who joined our academic seminar at Beijing 2010, and he has eagerly participated in many intramural activities on Chinese politics, his area of interest, such as in our weekly Chinese Table.More than anything else, however, I am recommending Mr. [본인이름] because of his leadership potential and his aggressiveness, which I saw in my classes on International Business Relations, which he attended. He made the best use of the advantages and disadvantages of his team members to accomplish their team project, which I graded highly. He also aggressively tackled the questions and discussions in such classes, which I taught in English. The other students also understood very well our lessons because of his insightful questions. As such, I believe Mr. [본인이름] will accomplish his academic goals in the U.S.Mr. [본인이름] is currently very interested in the emerging private entrepreneurs in China and their relationships with the Chinese Communist Party, which are the subjects of his thesis. I believe his research will have great implications on Korea’s foreign relations with China and on business sectors in many countries. I strongly believe Mr. [본인이름] has great potential and could contribute much to this field of study.It is my great pleasure to have taught Mr. [본인이름] and to recommend him for admission to your graduate program, which I believe would give him a grand opportunity to realize his potential._____________________________
December 10, 2011To whom it may concern:I am pleasured to recommend my student Mr. [본인이름] who has attended my classes for two semesters at [학교이름]. During the course work, he has shown excellence in communicating and delivering his arguments of his research projects to fellow students. With his exceptional communicating skills in both Chinese and English, he was also able to attend and participate as one of the representative students of our school in academic seminar that was held in Beijing in 2010.Mr. [본인이름] is currently very interested in topics of the relationship between emerging private entrepreneurs in China with the policy changes by the Chinese Communist Party, which is also the subject of his thesis. I am currently guiding his thesis research as one of the committee members and have seen him highly motivated for his work. He is currently at the stage of finalizing his thesis and I believe that with his sincerity and analytical skills, his research paper will hold meaningful implications in the field of business relations between Korea and China.His other distinctive skills include leadership, proactive attitude and ability to critically evaluate his and other people’s works. His insightful questions and comments contributed positively to his research projects that were assigned to him in class and he was evaluated as one of the best team members by his teammates.In short, I believe that with his analytical skills and sincerity, he will make a good candidate for your graduate program. If you have any other questions regarding his recommendation letter, please do not hesitate to contact me.Sincerely,
[Statement of Purpose]As the influence of China's extraordinary economic growth and active diplomacy on East Asia and the world is increasing, the rise of China and its influence has become a major subject of study in the field of social science especially in Korea, my native country. In the process of recovering from the global financial crisis that started in 2008, China again proved that it is the world’s growth engine by playing a locomotive role for the world economy. As it is commonly believed that China’s role and influence not only in economics but in other areas as well will dramatically expand in the future, deeper studies on China and on its development and transformation will be essential for countries to properly respond to such change in the world order. Many scholars agree, however, that the pace of the changes in China is so dramatic that even the notable observers are having difficulty catching up with it, let alone forecasting China’s future transformation.While Chinarse social problems, and the dimensions of the people’s demands on the country’s politics began to change. In this regard, I believe that a study on China’s politics is also essential to catch up with and forecast the future changes in China. While taking up International Studies at ***** University, I found that even the economic and diplomatic issues in China surprisingly have an internal political background and are so complicated that sometimes they cannot be explained with mere numbers and statistics, which confuses other countries. Even its international relations, such as its relations with the U.S., have been highly dependent on its internal political affairs. These have made me develop a deep interest in China’s politics.In the field of political science, I wish to focus more on the area of comparative politics because the Chinese political structure and its development have intrigued me in many ways compared to those of other countries, like the U.S. and the other East Asian nment explicitly takes Singapore’s “soft authoritarian” system as a model of China’s future political development while many scholars forecast that China will eventually follow the East Asian developmental model, which pursues economic reform, including marketization and institutionalization, and will evolve into political liberalization (although not in near future). Researching for Master’s thesis, I am currently focusing on China’s private entrepreneurs co-opted in Communist Party and the government’s policies on the rising middle class in China. Not only do these questions fall under the area of comparative politics; answering them also requires one to have a comprehensive academic background in American politics and international relations. Having numerous advanced courses under notable professors in all areas of political science, I think that the graduate programs in the U.S. is incomparable to programs in my country, and can provide me with both specific and comprehensive reseamocracy in many Asian and African developing countries. In this regard, I believe that by observing China’s political development or transformation, I can contribute to the political development of many countries and their policy making in relation to China, as well as to the field of study. To achieve my academic goals, I will study well to finish a related doctoral course after I finish the master’s course I am currently applying for.As an undergraduate student, I majored in Chinese literature. When I was a junior, I took an extra year and traveled to China to experience the Chinese culture and language. After graduating, I worked for three years at the ******. These experiences equipped me with sufficient communication skills to be able to connect well with the Chinese locals. In the International Studies program of ****** University that I am currently enrolled in, I have participated in academic activities such as “Chinese Table,” a weekly seminar in Chinese on China’s current iss I have developed the ability to make myself understood in English while discussing and debating a variety of academic topics. Furthermore, I experienced the U.S. educational system for six months when I temporarily enrolled in SUNY Rockland Community College in 2005 to learn English and American culture. Moreover, as part of my job in *****, a representative multinational company in South Korea, I contacted many U.S counterparts and buyers from the U.S to discuss with them the issues on the factory located in China. I believe that these experiences also helped me become fully capable of adapting to the U.S. while studying and living therein.Due to my limited background in political science, however, I decided to apply for the Master’s program. I think that I need to accumulate more knowledge on academic theories, and to learn more on the research methodologies of political science at the beginning of my study. After finishing this Master’s course, I intend to enroll in a doctoral courm.
The Collapse of the Weimar RepublicHistorical Background and QuestionAfter the German Revolution that took place between 1918 and 1919, the first national assembly of the new republic was convened in the city of Weimar in order to avoid the left-right conflicts in Berlin. The name Weimar Republic was given by historians for this reason. During the first five years after the establishment (1919-1923), the Weimar Republic had to suffer from political and economic crises. It had to deal with a Soviet Republic declared in Munich and had to pay a great amount of war reparations to the allies. Continued currency depreciation and hyper-inflation led Germany to default on the payments in 1923. In response, French occupied the Ruhr, which aggravated the currency depreciation of Germany. Nevertheless, since 1924 German economy started to recover and by 1929, it regained its pre-war industrial power. However, it again had to suffer from the economic recession after the Depression in 1929. This tin League (Bund der Landwirte).” However, during the Weimar Republic, the alliance between these two types of producers virtually broke down. The increased political importance of the peasantry in a universal electoral system changed the relations. But, the Junkers were able to portray their interests as national interests. As Abraham introduces, for example, “although the suspension of duties on feeds would lower production costs substantially for many peasants, but the proposal of the peasants was denounced”; therefore, peasants had to use more expensive but surplus rye as a feed. He says the peasants seemed to welcome the November Revolution.Nevertheless, relative adversity against industrial sector in the city was shared by estate owners and peasants and was functioned as a factor of unity at the end of Weimar Republic. During the republic, aid to agriculture dropped significantly, thus rural producers jointly opposed the post-1925 national agenda of the “dynamic export industries.”f the Labor ministry and state-mediated labor relations, organized labor in Weimar Republic could achieve many things: such as, relatively high and industry-wide wage rates; a broad spectrum of social-welfare measures; huge increases in state expenditures for social purposes, especially on the municipal level and for housing; and in 1927, a generous and comprehensive “unemployment-insurance law,” which Abraham dubbed as the “jewel of the system of Sozialpolitik.” Strikes and lockouts decreased significantly in this period.Nevertheless, according to Abraham, the Grand Coalition within the Weimar framework turned out to be tenuous, especially after the Depression. The aggravating tensions within capitalist made it difficult to aggregate the various broad Mittlestand strata anymore. The inter-industrial conflict started from issue of the Iron Processing Industries Agreement (AVI), in which the amount of production of iron and steel was fixed internationally. After the AVI accord in 1925, of industrialization and the increased role of the state; (2) the absence of a bourgeois revolution and the continued power of an precapitalist agrarian elite which feudalized the bourgeoisie in the course of a passive revolution; (3) continued weakness of parliamentary tendencies in both Prussia and the Reich. Puhle labeled the “prehistory of fascism (281)Beginning in the last quarter of the ninetheenth century, the estate owners and heavy industry embarked on a joint course of protectionism. The rapid growth of the SPD and the workers’ movement in general strengthened that Sammlung and added a bitter antisocialism to the antiliberalism and anti-Semitism.The dominant classes will appear as spokesmen for the interests of the nation as a whole, and the actualization of their needs through the state will generally be consented to and accepted as legitimate. (Hegemony) (20)Corporatism: bureaucratic administration rather than parliamentary debate, class collaboration and consensus rather tectations.So long as revenue sources remained domestic, the areas of state activity came into conflict with each other and further weakened the state. The functions of facilitating private accumulation and guaranteeing mass legitimacy could not be reconciled. (18)The impetus for the state crisis came from the determination of capitalist groups to use the economic situation to their political advantage. This in turn exacerbated political instability and legitimated the abandonment of and opposition to parliamentary government.The capitalist mode of production allows for the separation of economic, political, and ideological relations, because surplus is extracted solely within the economic ream, virtually unassisted by political or ideological mechanisms. In capitalism, these carriers of social relations become classes through their activity—through their practice in the political realm. (19)Thanks to the cheap debt-retirement, bankruptcies, and lowered real wages resulting from the inf2
Stabilizing an Unstable EconomyHyman Philip Minsky (1919-1996) was an American economist who studied the causes of financial crises in the capitalist system. Although he was a prominent scholar during the 1970s and 1980s, his idea has never been more popular than after the subprime mortgage crisis that began in 2008. Minsky was described as a radical Keynesian or post-Keynesian economist because he did not support some main ideas of traditional Keynesian economists who emphasize the importance of government debts and the some deregulation policies of financial market in the 1980s. His book, Stabilizing an Unstable Economy, was first published in 1986, when the U.S financial system faced the worst crisis after the Great Depression. In his book, Minsky analyzes a deep recession happened in the mid-1970s, and tells us the characteristics of instability embedded in the capitalist system. These days, as Henry Kaufman argues, many people label the subprime financial crisis a “Minsky Moment,”ance of the economy has become poorer in recent years than in the two decades immediately after World War II.“Natural Process” of the Capitalist SystemMinsky points out that the ever-increasing instability is a natural process of the capitalist economy. He is more concerned with the “behavior of agents during the euphoric periods.” Unlike other scholars that blame external shocks, “irrational exuberance,” or “foolish policy,” Minsky argues that the processes toward financial instability are “natural,” or “endogenous” to the capitalist system. Financing investment is the most important source of the instability found in the capitalist economy. Therefore, “how it is financed” plays a central role in this book.The first serious crisis came in 1966 in the municipal bond market and the second crisis came in 1970 with a rise of commercial paper. Each of these was resolved through prompt central bank actions. By these actions, profit-seeking institutions have gradually become less bounded by rder to prevent a full-fledged crisis, refinancing was needed. Such refinancing, or “lender-of-last-resort intervention,” was carried out by the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), and private financial institutions. Minsky argues that a major depression did not occur in 1975 because of two types of government intervention: (1) Big Government’s fiscal policy, which is the massive federal deficits; and (2) lender of last resort policy, in which refinancings were promptly executed by the Federal Reserve and cooperating private and public bodies.Minsky also argues that the evolution of banking practices, which means the “shift from discounting to open-market operations” have eliminated the normal-functioning, asset-based relations between the Federal Reserve and member banks. The Federal Reserve has an obligation to protect bank depositors from losses and to assure the availability of adequate financing to business. However, now it has little power to prevenhe capitalists’ use of finance is the core of his theory. Unfortunately, Minsky argues, for the development of economic theory, “Keynes’s investment theory of business cycles and his financial theory of investment in the face of uncertainty were lost as the standard interpretation evolved into today’s orthodox theory.”In Keynes’s view, employment depends upon the interaction of aggregate demand and aggregate supply. Minsky argues that, in the standard interpretations, Keynes’s theory of aggregate supply is largely ignored. In a capitalist economy, profit expectations determine output plans and employment offered by business. Actual profits are earned from the use of labor and existing capital assets, which depended upon short-run profit expectations. The short-run profit expectations, which determine aggregate supply, depend upon the expected effective demand for consumption and investment. The aggregate supply depends upon the costs of the financing. Therefore, the theory of supply unon than current programs.Minsky also preferred policies that would encourage equity finance rather than debt finance. Bank size is related to the size of firms with which banks do business. He favored a policy that supports small- to medium- size banks. He was a strong advocate of increasing the Fed’s oversight of banks by shifting to the use of the discount window rather than open-market operations in reserves provisioning.Minsky argues that as long as bank reserves are mainly the result of open-market purchases of government securities, the giant banks are virtually immune to Federal Reserve pressures. If normal functioning requires banks to borrow at the discount window, then the asset structure of banks will be under Federal Reserve supervision. A shift to a greater use of the discount window as a normal source of bank reserves should diminish the destabilizing influences in our economy that are the result of too rapid an expansion of bank financing of business and asset holdings.F 4