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In February 2021, Asian Ethnicity formed a new team of editors-in-chief, led by Ian G. Baird, professor of geography, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Matthew W. King, associate professor of religi...

Passion, Romance, and Qing: The World of Emotions and States of Mind in Peony Pavilion. By Tian Yuan Tan and Paolo Santangelo. Emotions and States of Mind in East Asia, vol. 4. 3 vols. Leiden: Brill, 2014. Pp. x + 1555. €349, $453.

This excellent book seeks to understand why conflict in Asia, and especially ethnic hostility and tension, have remained unresolved for so long. It is an important question, and Bhalla sees a major...

The Chinese nation is conceived as a unified state composed of 56 ethnic groups, the majority Han and 55 state-recognized ethnic minorities. In theory they are all equal, though in practice the immense population and other dominance of the Han makes that impossible (in 2010, the ethnic minorities made up only 8.41% of China’s total). There is a political system of limited autonomy in the places where the ethnic minorities are concentrated, the five main ones being equivalent in status to provinces. These are the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region, the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, and the Tibet Autonomous Region.

The literary form of autobiography has become very popular in China. The Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) spawned numerous accounts of lives during that time, virtually all of them revealing how dre...

The chapter analyses reasons why the scientific revolution that has so profoundly affected the modern world developed in Europe, not in China, which before the sixteenth century boasted a far more highly developed level of scientific knowledge than was the case in Europe. It proceeds from the work of the great British scientist Joseph Needham (1900–1995), who masterminded the multi-volume Science and Civilisation in China series. The reasons for the difference between Europe and China include material factors such as the physical environment. However, this chapter focuses more on the philosophical and cultural factors, including negative factors in China such as Confucian bureaucratism. It argues that comparative science is a topic of the utmost importance for global history.

In 2010, there were approximately 9 million Uyghur Muslims. Islam has strengthened in Xinjiang since the 1980s, with devotion greater in the south than the north, and become interrelated with the growth of Uyghur ethnic consciousness. Chinese law declares religious freedom, but there are many restrictions, including bans on children under 18 entering mosques, and various religious clothing such as the burqah in public places in Urumqi. Although Uyghur Muslims overwhelmingly abhor terrorism, authorities frequently blame the growth of separatist movements partly on Islam. Serious ethnic rioting in Urumqi in July 2009 led on to worsening Uyghur-Han relations and terrorist incidents. Terrorism and strained ethnic relations appear to be long-term problems, but an independent Xinjiang is unlikely. Islam will survive indefinitely.

This book derives from an international conference held in Singapore about intellectual and cultural exchanges and interactions between Asia and Europe during the first half of the 20th century. It...

This article describes a research agenda for investigating the relationship between tourism and the Chinese Dream, informed by the G20 First East-West Dialogue on Tourism and the Chinese Dream held in late 2014 on Australia’s Gold Coast. Six themes comprise this agenda, including (1) clarification of the “Chinese Dream” construct, (2) connections between the Dream, tourism and consumers, (3) geopolitical considerations, (4) conventional Triple Bottom Line sustainability considerations, (5) tourism and nontourism systems as open states, and (6) hybrid research perspectives. All themes are permeated by an implicit seventh theme of rapid change.

This paper analyses how the situation in China’s most northwestern province-level unit Xinjiang has affected China’s overall foreign relations since disturbances in its capital Urumqi in July 2009. Xinjiang’s most populous ethnic group is the mostly-Muslim Uighurs. The paper assumes a framework that puts a high priority on China’s facing west. Though no more important than the eastward-looking foreign policy that has dominated Western analysis, the paper sees China’s facing west perspective as deserving more attention than it has received. Russia and Central Asian countries have been positive about China’s economic aims in the region. However, friction has increased with China’s rise, Chinese authorities tending to blame Xinjiang’s disturbances on Islamism in Central Asia. China resents the USA for giving asylum to Rebiya Kadeer, president of the anti-China World Uyghur Congress. In 2011, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pushed the idea of a “New Silk Road” in Central Asia for peaceful economic development. China has long espoused the “Silk Road” idea, developing its own “Silk Road Economic Belt.” Damaged due to the 2009 riots, the China-Turkey relationship has improved because of various visits and agreements since 2010. The paper balances the dominantly economic Silk Road concept against Islamist terrorism. It argues that the aims of the Silk Road and Silk Road Economic Belt are sensible and practical, with positive economic relations the main trend. However, although the Central Asian “zone of conflict” is a lesser trend, tensions are serious and long term, especially those caused by Islamism and Islamist terrorism.

This paper analyzes China’s impact on Australia-U.S. relations from 1949 to 1996, including how far Australia’s China policy followed the American lead. The conclusion: American influence was dominant, but Australia’s own initiative was enough to belie the suggestion that it was no more than a blind follower.

Several major disturbances in Xinjiang in China’s northwest in 2013 have further exacerbated the already tense ethnic relations between the Han Chinese and the main minority in Xinjiang, the Uighurs, who are Turkic and Muslim. The Chinese state blames terrorism but most Western journalists remain sceptical. This article argues that terrorism is indeed a real threat, but the Chinese state tends to overreact to disturbances, exacerbating the problems. China’s response has included befriending countries further west, including Turkey. The outlook is not good for ethnic harmony, but the region is likely to develop economically and the prospects for independence or quasi-independence from China are very poor.

There are ten Muslim minorities in China, of which the most populous and important (in terms of their impact on China's history, contemporary politics, and society) are the culturally Chinese Hui and the Turkic Uighurs. The total population of the ten Muslim minorities is just over twenty‐three million (2010 Census). Almost all Muslims in China are Sunni. In general the Muslim minorities have been loyal to the Chinese state since 1949. The main exception is the Uighurs, among whom separatist movements, beginning in 1990, have increased in number. Relations between Uighurs and Han have worsened since the 1990s. Violent rioting reached a climax in July 2009 and violent incidents have continued since then.

This is a timely book on an important topic. Tibet has for long been a target of media and scholarly interest in the West. More recently, Xinjiang, in China’s far north-west and home to the Muslim-...

This paper takes up the study of Tibet in Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore. Tibet studies are defined through scholars working in universities in the specified countries/regions who have published works in which the Tibetans and the Tibetan areas of China are focal. The methodology is to analyse selected published works on Tibet as well as to interview selected scholars. The paper attempts to draw some characteristics of Tibet studies in the regions or countries specified, defined according to factors such as discipline, priority of language, area of interest, approach or political stand. It reaches no grand conclusions, but finds that the spectrum of Tibet studies in the places considered is fairly wide and, though not comparable with several other countries, the value is quite high in terms of quantity and quality.

This paper aims to be a personal and limited view of how tourism has affected the musical performing arts in China in the first decade of the twenty-first century. As a personal interpretation, it is based largely on experience, but supplemented by websites, statements and some Chinese and English-language scholarly studies. The musical performing arts focused on include various styles of indigenous musical theater (xiqu 戯 曲), especially Kunqu 崑曲 and Jingju 京劇, and a variety of minority performance traditions. Chinese tourism has itself increased enormously in recent years. Not only are more people visiting China, but more Chinese are travelling within their own country and abroad. 1 Increasing numbers of sites and objects have been opened to tourists and even deliberately exposed to “the tourist gaze” (Urry 2002) in order to make them more widely known and to make money. Among these tourist sites and objects are many that are cultural in one way or another, such as historical and/or religious buildings, ethnic villages, and live performances. Especially relevant for this paper is the fact that Chinese tourist companies have specifically 1 According to official figures (cited by Ryan and Gu 2009: 6), inbound tourist numbers rose from 17,833,100 in 1984 to 132 million in 2007, while over the same years domestic tourist numbers increased from 240 million to 1.61 billion. Inbound tourists in both years include those from Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. The figures for both inbound and domestic tourists have risen consistently year after year, apart from a slight downturn in 2003 because of the SARS crisis. Over the same years, the total receipts from inbound tourists multiplied by nearly 35 times, while income from domestic tourists expanded nearly 100 times (Ryan and Gu 2009: 6).

(2010). Performance Review: The Imperial Granary Production of Mudan Ting (The Peony Pavilion) CHINOPERL: Vol. 29, No. 1, pp. 209-216.

This article analyses post-World War II Western English language scholarship about China's history and present. It focuses on the ways this scholarship has changed over the period, including discussion of how the balance between comparative and area studies has changed towards the latter, but also gives some space to works by two great sinologists, Joseph Needham and John K. Fairbank. It offers a periodization of the scholarhip, with three periods separated by boundaries in the late 1960s and late 1980s and early 1990s. It argues that factors affecting scholarly images of China's present and very recent past have included not only the realities of China but also changing power relations between the west and China. Contemporary China appears to have advanced more than English language scholarship about it would suggest.

Commemorating the centenary of the spoken drama's introduction into China in 1907, the essay takes up several major themes in Chinese theatre over the last hundred years, such as its political and social implications and the tension between foreign and indigenous influences. The essay argues that drama in China during these years can be viewed largely as a microcosm of history, with politics having more impact on drama than the other way around. It also argues that change outweighs continuity, with foreign influences being stronger than indigenous and becoming more so, despite the persistence of nationalism. This article is the text of the Asian Theatre Journal Lecture , given in New Orleans on 27 July 2007 as part of the Association for Asian Performance Conference, itself part of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education Conference.