Search

China is highly concerned about its global image and is thus increasingly active in promoting itself globally. The most prominent and most controversial tool of China’s global image management is the Confucius Institute (CI). Launched in 2004 to introduce Chinese language and culture globally, CIs are normally joint ventures between Chinese and international universities, and are partially funded by the Chinese government. These close links with official China have raised concerns about their aims and have triggered heated debates about their intentions. While proponents describe CIs as a benign instrument of cultural exchange, critics define them as the propaganda arm of the Chinese Communist Party. This paper provides empirical evidence related to these debates as it critically engages with the actual content CIs present to their audiences by analysing internal work reports from 50 CIs in Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas. The paper outlines the specific narratives CIs present to global audiences and finds a clear agenda to present an apolitical version of China by emphasising elements of traditional Chinese culture and mostly avoiding controversial political topics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the formation of overseas Chinese communities in cities constitutes a major trend in reform era China, conceptualisations of the relationship between the overseas Chinese and China remain divided. The overseas Chinese are seen either as temporary migrants with little attachment to the country or as inescapably connected to China through native place. This paper aims to move beyond this dichotomous understanding by examining the processes of place-making among overseas Chinese Christians in Shanghai, one of China’s major urban centres. It draws on ethnographic research conducted within a Christian network and illustrates how these Christians negotiated the forces of global capitalism, state regulations, and an indigenous Christian trajectory to construct a religious territory and centre Shanghai as home. By showing how they understand their place as Christians, this paper argues that economic restructuring in the reform period enabled the emergence of cities as new centres where the overseas Chinese are making a place for themselves. It contributes to the literature on the overseas Chinese and China by redirecting attention from the native place as the locus of overseas Chinese attachment to the city as a new centre of belonging.  [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

With China’s economic rise and in particular its massive international trade surplus with the rest of the world, the exchange rate of its currency has come under increasing scrutiny in the new millennium. Based on a critical review of existing International Political Economy (IPE) theoretical approaches on exchange rate politics – theInnenpolitikapproaches and the international-domestic interaction approach – this paper argues that two-level game theory is a suitable tool for explaining the development of China’s exchange rate policy. By specifically examining the external factors and domestic sources of China’s exchange rate policy, this paper develops a complete analytical framework in which China’s central decision makers are understood to strive to reconcile international pressures and domestic bargainers when making decisions on exchange rate policy. After offering a theoretical review, revision and synthesis, the paper provides an empirical study of China’s 2005 exchange rate reform to specifically show how international factors played an agenda-setting role in China’s exchange rate policy making and how China’s domestic politics determined the pathway of the exchange rate reform in July 2005. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Celebrity philanthropy in mainland China is a recent phenomenon that has attracted both media publicity and public controversy. Despite its visibility, few data exist regarding how widespread the phenomenon is, and whether it has been growing over time. This paper addresses this gap, using a sample of entertainment and sports celebrities obtained from publicly available sources to answer three key questions. What proportion of celebrities in mainland China engage in philanthropic activities? When did they become involved in philanthropic activities? With what kinds of philanthropic causes and organisations are they connected, and in what capacity? The paper reveals that, in a very short period of time, mainland China’s top celebrities have become just as involved with philanthropic causes as their North American counterparts. The rapid rise of celebrity philanthropy has been correlated with a series of natural disasters and the explicit encouragement of government authorities, offsetting the absence of a tradition of private charitable activities in the People’s Republic of China since its founding. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Scholars tend to overlook the overseas Chinese press as a communicative tool for Chinese nationalism. This paper takes media history as its focal point to demonstrate the contextual influences that shaped the operations of Chinese print media and gave rise to the manifestation of the overseas Chinese (huaqiao) identity in Japan. In particular, it emphasises that the mobilisation of the modern Chinese nationalism movement of the time was not the sole determinant of Chinese identity. It was also influenced by the way in which Chinese ethnic boundaries came to be shaped and reshaped in different historical periods through the dynamics between overseas Chinese communities and Japanese society. I use two overseas Chinese publications from different periods to illustrate the impacts of modern Chinese nationalism and the changing social and political context of Japan on the Chinese press. Finally, I present a synthetic narrative to account for the history of the overseas Chinese press in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with the cultural politics of agency, and explores the relationship between cultural form, migrant experience and social change. It traces the emergence of a range of literary forms in south China and how these new cultural forms provide hitherto unavailable space to contest the state- and market-driven narratives, which tend to linkdagongmei’s (rural migrant women’s) sexuality with inexperience and vulnerability on the one hand, and criminality, immorality and incivility on the other. The paper suggests that these newly emerging cultural forms present alternative perspectives on the practical circumstances, moral rationalities and emotional consequences that condition and shape migrant women’s sexual experience, and for this reason, they constitute important points of intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Concern has been growing recently in China about the well-being of children, women and the elderly “left behind” on the farm when family members leave the village in search of waged work. Increasingly, the left-behind are portrayed in academic and policy discourse as a “vulnerable group” of passive dependants, sidelined by modernisation and abandoned by their families. This paper challenges this discourse, arguing that while attention to the well-being of the left-behind is vital, there is an urgent need for a shift in focus from their vulnerability to their agency. The paper focuses on the agency of left-behind women between the ages of 50 and 80. It aims, first of all, to point the way toward an empirically richer understanding of the social construction of older women’s agency and well-being. The second aim of the paper is to suggest how different conceptualisations of “agency” and “older women” might contribute to more ethical and politically effective strategies for development and the improvement of women’s well-being. To further these two aims, the paper draws on fieldwork conducted in rural Ningxia, north-western China, and on critiques of the “capability approach” to development expounded by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Located in Guangzhou, Shamian Island was leased as a foreign concession to the British and French forces in the mid-nineteenth century. The island has been granted the highest heritage protection status. Through the lens of the Fragmented Authoritarianism framework, this paper examines the bureaucratic structure of the Chinese state, bargaining activities, and policy outcomes related to conserving Shamian Island. The following conclusions are drawn: first, coordinated conservation efforts have been hamstrung by the fragmented heritage management system that is tier-differentiated and jurisdiction-based; and second, the two most concerned agencies – the Planning Bureau and the Cultural Bureau – have not been able to agree on the appropriate approach to conserving heritage and historic buildings on the site. Deadlock has resulted, as no agency can really push for better, and more compatible, policies. Nor have sustained conservation practices for the site been viewed as politically significant enough to prompt higher-level government officials to step in and end the bureaucratic squabbling. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Most modern states have policies for the management of religion. For those with diverse religious communities, how to ensure the peaceful coexistence of the various religions becomes an important challenge for governments. Hence, modern secular states often delineate a proper “domain” for religion in society in order to properly regulate it. In response, religious groups, many transnational in nature, can adopt various strategies to respond to state regulation, ranging from resistance, to accommodation, to acceptance. This paper examines how, in its negotiations with state-imposed restrictions, the Yiguan Dao – a transnational Chinese syncretic sect that has experienced phenomenal growth in Asia and beyond – has chosen not to identify itself publicly as a “religion”, but rather adopts a more “secular” identity in its official dealings with the public and the state by emphasising its “cultural” and “scientific” aspects. Further, the sect utilises the practice of religious territoriality to transform officially secular residential properties into the sacred sites of temples in order to circumvent state restrictions on religious buildings. This paper demonstrates how a religious movement can undergo organisational change and adopt innovative territorial practices, and manage to flourish in the face of state regulations as well as the negative views of other, more “orthodox”, religions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Unlike economic capital, which is visible and easy to calculate, social capital is intangible and difficult to assess. Although both types of capital are crucial in determining social relations and social behaviour, little solid research has been done on the latter. This paper attempts to use the rags-to-riches story of Sir Robert Ho Tung, a first-generation Hong Kong Eurasian entrepreneur who commenced life without traditional social/cultural capital as the illegitimate son of a Chinese woman and a Dutchman, to illustrate the processes involved in cultivating and accumulating social capital. With special reference to economic development in early colonial Hong Kong and major social transformations in the Chinese mainland, this paper also demonstrates how a group of so-called social/racial 'half-caste bastards' (Eurasians) were able to form their own social networks of mutual help and protection. It also considers how they worked to consolidate, mobilise, aggrandise and transmit their social capital. In conclusion, it is argued that Eurasians in early twentieth-century Hong Kong constructed their personal networks like a web, with different interconnecting layers that functioned at different socio-economic-political levels to serve different purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Set a few years after China's opening to the various forces of globalisation, the film Shanghai Dreams (2005) tells the story of the conflict between Qinghong, a 17 year-old schoolgirl who wishes to remain in her hometown of Guiyang, and her father, Lao Wu, whose dream of returning to his hometown of Shanghai is stirred by reports of the better life others have obtained as a result of Deng Xiaoping's policy of economic modernisation. Analysing their familial conflict in terms of a “political melodrama”, the paper contextualises both the dramatic ideological shift from patriarchal state Communism to free market capitalism and the massive internal migration from China's interior to its eastern coast to argue that Qinghong's eventual psychological breakdown represents not merely a personal, sentimental feeling of homelessness but the more philosophical form of estrangement characteristic of modernity examined by Martin Heidegger. The paper then explores how one of the film's most important scenes, Qinghong's rape, links Heidegger's notion of homelessness to Sigmund Freud's understanding of the uncanny. The paper concludes with a brief examination of how Qinghong's catatonic silence represents the less-discussed consequence of the schizophrenic freedoms engendered by late capitalism as defined by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2007, amateur on-line writer Kong Ergou’s triad novel series,Past Events of the Northeast: Twenty Years of the Triads, became a hit as a piece of network original literature. Five years later, the first volume of the book series was adapted into a network television drama of the same title. Focusing on the television drama, this paper examines three interrelated “dimensions” of the text. The first “dimension” relates to the correspondence between the inception and development of underworld gangs, and the vicissitudes experienced by the Chinese people during the harsh and unprecedented economic and cultural conditions that were introduced during the post-Mao era. A second “dimension” of this dramatic text finds that the nostalgia for and admiration of totalitarian times, together with a postmodern parody and deconstruction of Maoist society and its ideology, are juxtaposed in contemporary popular cultural products such asPast Events, thus demonstrating the complex and obscure emotions of ordinary Chinese people in relation to socialist revolutionary times. The final “dimension” compares the chivalrous spirit espoused by the gangsters with the ever-deteriorating morality and ethical values prevalent in present-day China. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Continuous economic reform and social development have induced and forced the Chinese government to adjust its strategies towards non-profit development. Enhanced state capacities, emergent legitimacy of non-profit organisations, genuine demand for non-profit partners, public management modernisation and other factors have not only enriched the “control” mandate by introducing persuasive means, but have also driven the government to become a major empowering force for non-profit development. Advanced local governments in China take the lead in adopting mixed strategies of control and empowerment to forge a path of non-profit development in favour of non-profit organisations that are politically inactive and professionally capable. This paper shows the resilience of the regime by presenting examples of evolving governmental strategies of control and empowerment at the local and national levels. It argues that the Chinese government’s non-profit strategies are increasingly multidimensional and complicated, featuring changes in purpose, constraints, available means and government–non-profit relations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores the sexual politics of Chinese nationalism in Taiwan by studying a rescue campaign for a particular group of women, so-called foster daughters. It concerns the politicisation of female fosterlings’ problems, particularly their involvement in prostitution, in relation to the reproduction of postcolonial nationhood during the 1950s. Tracing the nationalist rescue discourses and tactics around foster daughters via pro-official and journalistic materials, this study investigates how foster daughters’ physical and sexual suffering was constructed and governed as a social and national problem, articulating the cultural specificity of rescue in a particular geo-political terrain. It argues that the rescue campaign for foster daughters embodied the (de-)colonisation struggle rather than a moral enterprise at individual and social levels, and that it established the political, cultural and gender foundations for Chinese nation-building in Taiwan. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In recent years, popular protest in China has emerged from a state of near-invisibility. Drawing on a diachronic analysis of news media coverage, this paper traces how a number of major protest events gradually entered the Chinese media’s spotlight and came to be portrayed in an increasingly protester-sympathising fashion over the course of the Hu-Wen administration. It argues that these changes were triggered by structural transformations of the Chinese public sphere, but underlines that deliberate policy choices by the political leadership served as a crucial agent of change. Facing proliferating unrest and an increasingly unimpeded flow of information, the central authorities have gradually shifted propaganda policy from a suppressive to a more proactive approach. They have thereby created critical opportunities for Internet users and investigative journalists to push the envelope further towards protester-sympathising accounts. The development is significant as there are good reasons to surmise that increased media coverage has exacerbated the dynamics of popular contention. Theoretically, it deserves to be noted that non-inevitable choices by an authoritarian leadership have led to an outcome in which media coverage of citizens who challenge the state on the streets has become substantially more frequent and positive than before. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article argues that contemporary independent documentary filmmaking in China has been used as a tool by Chinese citizens to intervene in the public sphere and to provoke social change. I therefore propose to look at the phenomenon of Chinese video activism under the umbrella of alternative media. In particular, I take into consideration the “rhizomatic” media approach, which focuses on the interaction of alternative media with authority, the market and civil society. The case studies I present consist of several documentary projects completed between 2004 and 2010 that opened up spaces of dialogue between filmmakers and local authority, mass media and civil society. The paper claims that documentary films have an impact on audiences, whose members are consequently motivated to engage in discussion and action. I argue that activist video-making in China is reshaping the identity of urban citizens: through filmmaking, urban citizens claim their right to access information and demonstrate their will to participate and intervene in social issues. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

China’s sudden suspension of rare earth exports to Japan in September 2010 represented the opening of a new front in the international competition for natural resources. As the demands of the global economy change, the international demand for rare earths, which are used in a diverse range of high-tech industries, has also increased. As China is currently the largest rare earths exporter, its actions in regulating rare earths exports will directly affect the interests of other states in the supply chain. This paper therefore examines how China assumed this dominant position in the supply chain. It also looks at how major rare earths consumers such as Japan and South Korea are reducing their reliance on and vulnerability to Chinese rare earths supplies through means such as seabed exploration in disputed territories, which might contribute to geopolitical tensions and instability in the East Asian region. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In China, although “general interest” magazines can be said to have existed during the Maoist and early post-Maoist eras, Western-style magazines that promote a consumerist lifestyle came into being and gained widespread popularity only in the past two decades. Among them, an entire group of titles consists of localised Chinese editions of internationally popular lifestyle magazines. This paper explores the interaction of global trends and influences with local cultures and realities in men's lifestyle magazines published in China. In particular, it discusses the Chinese “variations” of the Western “new man” and “new lad” types of male image. Despite the superficial similarities with Western images, critical readings and quantitative studies of the verbal and visual content of these magazines reveal some distinctive “Chinese” features. As a form of popular culture, the men's lifestyle magazine lends expression to the fantasies, desires and needs of “new rich” men in China. With consumerism and aspirationalism at the centre of its ideological construction, it serves as an interesting site of negotiation between what Lisa Rofel calls the two aspects of “cosmopolitanism with Chinese characteristics” – namely, a self-conscious transcendence of locality and a domestication of cosmopolitanism by way of renegotiating China's place in the world. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper investigates the representation of micro-narratives in contemporary Chinese art by examining the multi-layered narratives in Cao Fei's Pearl River Delta Anti-heroes performed at the opening of the 2nd Guangzhou Triennial in 2005. I consider Cao's work as a hyper-realistic portrayal of the micro-narratives of the Pearl River Delta region in a mediated form highly influenced by the media, entertainment industry and popular culture of the region and Hong Kong. Theatricality, kitsch and the distinctive local essence of South China are revealed in the form of a TV soap opera and the use of colloquial Cantonese throughout the performance, along with occasional Putonghua or Mandarin. Language as a signifier of cultural politics has been deployed as an indispensable tool to empower the region within the broader body politic of the People's Republic of China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The past three decades have seen the resurgence of China's civil society through the blossoming of NGOs that campaign for various marginalised interests, including environmental protection. Many studies have examined the co-evolution of the Internet and China's civil society. This paper examines the role of the Internet in strengthening grassroots environmental activism, taking into consideration the corporatised character of Chinese NGOs. Through a detailed ethnographic case study of a leading grassroots environmental group, the Global Village of Beijing (GVB), I argue that Internet technologies effectively empower resource-poor activists in their self-representation, information brokering, network building, public mobilisation and construction of discourse communities. The Net therefore contributes to the nascent formation of a green public sphere in China by fostering a discourse that counterbalances rapid economic development. Also discussed here are issues that hamper this process, including resource limitations, the fragmentation of online discourse communities, and the marginalisation and “caging” of environmental discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper shows how wuwei (effortless action) and associated concepts drawn from Daoist thought are applied in analyses of the Chinese market economy and state-economy relations published in recent issues of social science and Communist Party journals in the People's Republic of China. Such use of traditional concepts partially displaces Marxist terminology from 'diagnostic economics'. In discussing the use of these concepts in 5 articles published between 2000 and 2008, the economic theory of Daodejing is also presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the adoption and roll-out of a 100 Per Cent Condom Use Program (100% CUP) in the People's Republic of China (PRC). It first details the initial implementation of a 100% CUP in Thailand and explains how this created a framework for action in other developing countries. It then examines the implementation of pilot programs in China. We conclude that governmental authorities in the PRC now actively target designated high-risk populations such as female sex workers in order to combat the spread of sexually transmissible infections and HIV/AIDS. This has resulted in the introduction of new legal frameworks and the use of widespread media publicity to promote condom use and safer-sex strategies. However, the more effective implementation of a national 100% CUP in China requires attention to the problems associated with the legal and social marginalisation of female sex workers, which is reinforced by police-led crackdowns on prostitution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper begins by reviewing the ancient Chinese worldview, one imbued with cultural particularism wherein the Middle Kingdom identified itself as the centre of the universe. I then distinguish the ways in which historically the Confucian East and Christian West have respectively exerted cultural hegemony. I next analyse China's rebuffing of liberal democracy, and how the CCP's retention of one-party rule has generated concerns about its legitimacy. I conclude by showing that China and America each possess moral traditions - specifically Confucianism and Jeffersonian Deism - that have overlapping outlooks. Both maintain a worldview that disavows extremism. Based on this broader philosophical-religious analysis, I argue that contentions over liberal democracy notwithstanding, China and America share moral ideals vital for confronting some of today's exigencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a paper that focuses on intermarriage in China and its changing image. It presents an analysis of the intermarriages, specifically in Shanghai, on the grounds of social exchange that they affect. Moreover, it explores their outcomes for immigrant internalization for the couples. According to the author, long-term relationships between men from the West and women from China were greatly influenced by considerations of emigration during the 1980s and 1990s. The study reports that most couples involved in this kind of intermarriage eventually become business partners.