From liberating production to unleashing consumption: Mapping landscapes of power in Beijing

This article offers an analysis of two locales in downtown Beijing nominally set aside for public use, Tiananmen Square and The Place, as successively linked landscapes of power that define the shifting and relations between market and place negotiated by the Chinese Communist Party-state over time. However, whereas Zukin (1993) argues that such landscapes lack coherent values because of their subordination to capitalism’s haphazard process of “creative destruction,” a salient feature of Beijing’s shifting landscapes of power is the authoritarian Party-state’s persistent mediation of market relations, and its subordination of the contradictions between market and place to the changing needs of the regime under market reform. Despite their apparent differences in intent and design, the shopping mall has eclipsed the public square as a key urban site through which the Party-state seeks to build a self-conscious and cohesive socioeconomic class of subjects over which and for which it seeks to rule.     

中国历史上的“契约”

很早以来,中国人就通过订立契约来处理各种社会经济关系,契约在人们的日常生活中扮演着重要的角色。文章分析了中国古代契约形制与语言的变化,说明了这种变化的社会背景;讨论了契约的发现与契约的研究史,提出利用古文书学的方法,对于契约展开长时段、跨地域的比较研究,将会是今后中国古代契约研究的方向。     

Flowing goods,hardening borders? China’s commercial expansion into Kyrgyzstan re-examined1

The Dordoi Bazaar, in Kyrgyzstan’s capital, Bishkek, has in the past 15 years become a prime example of the increasing impact of China’s rapid development in this structurally and politically weak post-Soviet state and in relation to its people. Chinese-made consumer goods, worth several billions of US dollars annually, have been re-exported overland via Kyrgyzstan to wholesale and retail clients across Eurasia. However, the hardening of the state border to the north, and particularly following the foundation of a tripartite customs union (CU) including Kazakhstan, Russia, and Belarus in the same year, has threatened the livelihoods of numerous trade entrepreneurs at the bazaar. Given Kyrgyzstan’s recent accession to the newly formed Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) in May 2015, it makes sense to re-evaluate local representations and future perspectives on China’s powerful commercial expansion into Central Asia. Based on several months of ethnographic fieldwork in Bishkek between 2012 and 2015, this article analyzes the dynamic socioeconomic effects of China’s trade and transport policy on trade entrepreneurs in Kyrgyzstan. It outlines how China’s commercial dominance in the neighboring state, albeit discussed controversially and often running up against nationalist anti-Chinese sentiments, have strongly influenced Kyrgyzstani trade entrepreneurs’ interaction with Chinese partners and their strategies of doing business at and beyond the bazaar – as will be demonstrated herein through the example of Bishkek’s emerging apparel industry. This article also illuminates the ways Dordoi’s trade entrepreneurs make sense of the uncertainties after Kyrgyzstan’s accession to the EEU.     

冯夏威的自杀殉国与民族主义的社会动员

论文简述了冯夏威自杀殉国与1905年抵制美货运动的联系及其民族英雄形象塑造的过程和重要意义。1905年华侨冯夏威为抗议美国排华政策,在上海美国领事馆门口服毒自尽,奏响了抵制美货运动的序曲,并以民族英雄的形象贯穿运动始终。冯夏威的民族英雄形象是个体自塑与社会他塑的复合体。自杀殉国与遗书自述,完成了个体自塑的描摹;各方悼念与报道宣传,实现了社会他塑的目标。其自杀动机与反美抵制行为,契合了中国近代民族主义的发展潮流与认同需求,个人意志表达呈现出社会化、国家化、民族化的趋向。中国近代民族主义的急进发展,不仅为社会他塑提供了空间与动源,而且也认可了个体自塑的存在与价值。     

South–South? Culture Talk and Labour Relations at a Chinese‐owned Factory in Hungary

In 2011, a large Hungarian chemical factory was acquired by a Chinese competitor. The resulting encounter between Chinese managers and Hungarian staff — which took place in the context of a harsh retrenchment that has curtailed the powers of organized labour in Hungary — highlights the inadequacy of dichotomies such as North/South, East/West and socialist/capitalist. As with other corporate acquisitions in Europe, Chinese managers expected to ‘learn’ from ‘advanced Western management practices’; instead, they found what they interpreted as a backward, ‘socialist’ work culture in need of modernization. For their part, Hungarian staff feared the imposition of a culturally inappropriate ‘Asian labour discipline’, but have come to see at least some of the changes as part of a necessary modernization. ‘Asian’, ‘European’, ‘Western’ and ‘socialist’ are floating signifiers used by both Chinese and Hungarian staff at the factory in various, often contradictory ways to justify management choices, staff resistance or individual preferences. As a result of their analysis, the authors suggest that discussions about the impact of Chinese investment on labour practices should recognize a wider range of contexts, including the presence of precarious socioeconomic environments within the so‐called ‘advanced economies’.     

The Turtle Garden: Tan Kah Kee’s last spiritual world

Abstract

This paper explores the role of diasporic subjects in China’s heritage-making through a case study of the Turtle Garden built by Tan Kah Kee in Xiamen, China. Tan is the first person with Overseas Chinese background who built museums in the P.R. China and has been regarded as a symbol of Overseas Chinese patriotism. This paper argues that the Turtle Garden, conceptualised as a postcolonial ‘carnivalesque’ space, is more than a civic museum for public education. It reflects the owner’s highly complex and sometimes conflicting museum outlook embedded in his life experience as a migrant, his encounter with (British) colonialism in Malaya, and integrated with his desire and despair about the Chinese Communist Party’s nation-building project in the 1950s. Rather than a sign of devotion to the socialist motherland as simplistically depicted in China’s discourse, the garden symbolises Tan’s last ‘spiritual world’ where he simultaneously engaged with soul-searching as a returned Overseas Chinese and alternative diasporic imagining of Chinese identities and nation. It brings to light the value of heritage-making outside centralised heritage discourses, and offers an invaluable analytical lens to disentangle the contested and ever shifting relationship between diasporic subjects, cultural heritage and nation-(re)building in the Chinese context and beyond.     

Uncorking the neoliberal bottle: neoliberal critique and urban change in China

Neoliberalism’s theoretical ascendancy within urban geography coincided with the rapid growth of scholarly attention to Chinese cities. Therefore, it is unsurprising that neoliberal causality has been a widely used tool for interpreting China’s spatial transformation. This paper critically reviews some of the most prominent debates on neoliberalism in the Chinese context. China’s Leninist political hierarchy and Dual Structure, crucial institutions for the management and regulation of society and economy under Mao, are now reduced to the quirks of “actually existing neoliberalism.” Neoliberal critique applied to China, however, fails to adequately explain China’s spatial development because it assigns causality for social and economic inequality to globalized processes of capital accumulation while ignoring the continued importance of Maoist institutions in China’s present-day political economy. Uncritical acceptance of neoliberalism’s explanatory power for spatial change has led to flawed and inaccurate portrayals of the development and future trajectories of Chinese cities, and misrepresents the sources of social injustice in Chinese society.     

一战华工历史论述的语境变迁与意义重建

论文探讨了在中国参战语境、社会革命语境以及当代改革开放语境下一战华工历史论述的形成过程及特定意义。百年来,中国围绕一战华工形成的论述分为两类:一类着眼于国家视角,着重从中国作为参战国与战胜国的角度展现中国在华工招募过程中发挥的主导性作用与华工扮演的参战角色;另一类立足于华工视角,最典型的是在社会革命语境下从华工作为帝国主义、军阀主义对立面的角度揭示英、日、法帝国主义与北洋军阀势力的压迫本质与华工的革命精神。当代改革开放语境下的华工论述似乎接续了中国参战语境下的华工论述。虽然同是立足于国家视角,但在当代改革开放语境下的论述更侧重展现华工在中国走向世界的历史进程中所发挥的作用以及中西文明交流的历史进程。尽管社会革命语境下的华工论述逐渐瓦解,但个体视角的论述依然不失为国家视角论述之外的另一个重要视角,二者之间的矛盾突显,是当前中国一战华工论述重建的困境所在。     

Qian Mu’s Guoshi dagang : Reflections on a Modern Chinese Conservative

This paper examines the predicament of modern Chinese conservatism. I use the eminent historian Qian Mu (1895-1990) as an example to show that under the influence of modernity and in an effort to preserve tradition, a prominent conservative like Qian needed to “modernize” Chinese tradition so that it could be saved. I will examine Qian’s reconstruction of Chinese history, which was not just a reiteration of China’s past, but a new type of understanding of Chinese tradition influenced by modern Western concepts. By focusing on Qian’s most prominent work, Guoshi dagang, we can get a sense of the struggle of modern Chinese conservatives as they tried to fend off the detractors of Chinese tradition.     

The politics of productivity growth in Australia

A prominent feature of recent Australian economic discourse is the assertion that there was a ‘productivity surge’ during the 1990s, resulting from the neoliberal microeconomic reforms inaugurated in the early 1980s. However, the evidence for the productivity surge is routinely overstated, thus undermining the rationale for many past and future microeconomic reforms. There is also substantial evidence that productivity growth can have perverse socioeconomic and/or environmental consequences. Nonetheless, many policymakers, economists and commentators remain preoccupied with increasing productivity growth. This article examines the Australian productivity debate and concludes that this is driven more by neoliberal norms than socioeconomic necessity. These are manifest in a disciplinary discourse that constructs productivity growth as a national imperative, unencumbered by negative social and environmental externalities.     

Re-examining the end of Mao’s revolution: China’s changing statecraft and Sino-American relations, 1973–1978

Synthesizing heretofore available Chinese sources, this article re-examines the long process of the end of China’s continuous revolution from 1973 to 1978, a transitional period insufficiently addressed by scholars. It explores China’s evolving statecraft in the maelstrom of leadership struggles, as Chinese leaders – Mao Zedong, Hua Guofeng, and Deng Xiaoping – continuously redefined China’s foreign and domestic goals, fluctuating between revolution and development. This article concludes that despite predominant scholarly focus on geopolitics, China’s changing perception of its national interests largely determined Sino-American relations from Richard Nixon’s historic trip in 1972 to normalisation of relations in 1979.     

Nationalism and anti-ethno-politics: why ‘Chinese Development’ failed at Myanmar’s Myitsone Dam

In 2011, the Burmese military-backed government stunned global audiences by unilaterally suspending the construction of the Myitsone Dam, the cornerstone of China’s largest hydropower project abroad. This prominent failure of China’s “Going Out” investment strategy reverberated globally. Both Western and Chinese accounts frame the event as a pivotal moment in Myanmar’s celebrated reform process, the cooling of China–Myanmar relations, and US–China geopolitical rivalry in the Asia-Pacific. However, my ethnographic field and media research from 2010 to 2015 reveals that the mega-project’s failure does not originally stem from inter-state geopolitics or contested economics and ecology. Through chronological narration, I show how the Myitsone Dam is primarily the casualty of a distinctly ethno-political causality, whereby three nationalisms clashed and the replication of China’s “anti-ethno-political” model of development failed. Though no monolithic Chinese state directs “Chinese Development” overseas, individual Chinese entrepreneurs nonetheless draw from the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC’s) anti-political and state-centric paradigm when facing foreign social worlds. In the particular case of Myitsone, Chinese proponents drew from PRC’s state-nationalist heuristics of “national minorities and state-led development” and “Western anti-China conspiracy,” when facing Myanmar’s ethnic Kachin and Burman nationalisms. State ideological subjectivities of these developers seemed to blind them to the weakness in their own anti-ethno-political strategies, even when those collapsed publicly. I conclude that the Myitsone Dam’s construction will likely not be restarted, despite the hydropower company’s efforts. The Myitsone case also exemplifies how China’s previous historical entanglements in its neighboring regions uniquely disrupt the progress of “Going-Out” in Asia.     

The transnational world of Chinese entrepreneurs in Chicago, 1870s to 1940s: New sources and perspectives on southern Chinese emigration

This article contributes to an ongoing dialogue on the causes of migration and emigration and the relationship between migrants/emigrants and their homelands by investigating historical materials dealing with the Chinese in Chicago from 1870s to 1940s. It shows that patterns of Chinese migration/emigration overseas have endured for a long period, from pre-Qing times to today’s global capitalist expansionism. The key argument is that from the very beginning of these patterns, it has been trans-local and transnational connections that have acted as primary vehicles facilitating survival in the new land. While adjusting their lives in new environments, migrants and emigrants have made conscious efforts to maintain and renew socioeconomic and emotional ties with their homelands, thus creating transnational ethnic experiences.     

声援、动员、维权——从1930年“萧信庵案”看华侨的民族主义诉求

论文概述了萧信庵被辱事件的经过以及印尼侨胞的声援,国内侨界对“萧案”的舆论宣传和推动国民政府外交交涉;分析了“萧案”背后的华侨民族主义诉求。1930年萧信庵被辱事件,因涉及华侨权益和国家尊严而备受关注。在这一事件中,侨界群体以领导者的身份积极推动案件进展,最终使之发展成为一场规模浩大的反帝爱国运动。在此期间,不论是“萧案”的舆论发酵,还是“反荷运动”的发起,或是赴京请愿的义举,都无不透露出华侨群体以民族主义为纽带,凝聚社会各界资源,敦促国民政府践行积极外交政策,从而为印尼华侨争取政治经济利益的目的。华侨群体对“萧案”的积极介入,体现出20世纪30年代华侨民族主义具有反帝爱国和就地图存的双重性质。     

Social media and the transformation of ‘Chinese nationalism’: ‘Igniting positive energy’ in China since the 2012 London Olympics (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

During the 2012 London Olympics, a spontaneous movement to ‘ignite positive energy’ emerged in Chinese social media from the massive and fervent support for the Chinese grassroots torch bearers. This grassroots‐oriented movement has generated a ‘transcendental Chinese patriotism’, in which patriotism is intertwined with individualism, transnationalism, and universalism. The ideal and sentiment of this hybrid Chinese patriotism forms a stark contrast to the mainstream ‘Chinese nationalism’, which has been characterized by scholars as various forms of reactive collectivism derived from state authority, Confucian tradition, and the wounded memories of China's recent history. This online movement has also demonstrated an impressive efficacy in shaping the socio‐political landscape of China beyond transforming Chinese nationalism.     

Chinese migrant women as boundary markers in Singapore: unrespectable,un-middle-class and un-Chinese

This article argues that the intersection of ethnicity, class and gender foregrounds the contestation of Chinese-ness in a context of migration in Singapore. I argue that the presence of co-ethnic mainland Chinese migrant women has heightened Chinese-Singaporean women’s anxieties. In lieu of ‘convenient markers’ of language and ethnicity, Chinese-Singaporean women have had to look elsewhere for the production of difference. This article argues that the Chinese-Singaporean woman favourably contrasts herself with the newly arrived mainland Chinese migrant woman in regards to the notion of respectable femininity – the latter being a key marker of middle-classness. Specifically, Chinese migrant women are perceived as unrespectable through charges of excessive materialism and of transgressing the Asian/Chinese family. By emphasising Chinese migrant women’s perceived lack of respectability, Chinese-Singaporean women can (re)establish their own respectable femininity, middle-classness and Chinese-ness.     

How Chinese scholars think about Chinese foreign policy

China’s assertive diplomacy in recent years has ignited intense debates among international relations (IR) scholars. Some argue that China’s assertive behaviour is rooted in its perception of increasing power and capabilities. Others suggest that it is US policies that triggered China’s assertive reactions. Relying on an original survey of China’s IR scholars conducted in Beijing in 2013 and using structural equation modelling, we empirically examine Chinese IR scholars’ attitude towards Chinese power versus the United States, their perceptions of US policy in Asia, and their preference for an assertive Chinese foreign policy. We find that both the power perception and policy reaction arguments make sense in accounting for Chinese IR scholars’ attitude regarding China’s assertive diplomacy. However, our research suggests that a more pessimistic view on Chinese power is more likely to be associated with a preference for an assertive foreign policy.     

‘One Belt,One Road’ and China’s emerging Afghanistan dilemma

This article argues that China’s approach to Afghanistan since the end of the Cold War has been shaped by the desire both for security in Xinjiang and for geopolitical advantage in Central Asia. While Beijing’s Xinjiang calculus was ascendant from 1991 to 2001, since 2001 a broader geopolitical calculus has emerged. This latter factor has been encapsulated in President Xi Jinping’s ‘One Belt, One Road’ strategy, which, at its core, is an outgrowth of Beijing’s decades-long agenda to integrate Xinjiang and utilise this region’s unique geopolitical position to facilitate a China-centric Eurasian geo-economic system. While China’s Xinjiang calculus determines that it shares an interest with the USA in combating radical Islamism in Afghanistan (and Central Asia more broadly), the geopolitical calculus of the ‘One Belt, One Road’ strategy points to a fundamental incompatibility between US and Chinese interests.     

传杨邦基《聘金图》的创作背景和辱宋寓意

美国大都会博物馆所藏《聘金图》卷无标题及画家款识,虽然学界一般认为是描绘宋金交聘的历史政治画,但作者和画意并无定论。本文根据画中山水风格和人物服饰、宋金交聘礼仪和使节往返路线,以及当时社会政治环境,论证此画可能为仕金汉人杨邦基(约1110-1181)为金主海陵王(1149-1161年在位)所创作,时间为1150年代晚期。其创作目的是借南宋国使在金境备受轻慢的现象写宋廷之不堪,默许海陵统一中国的野心和女真政权在中国历史上的正统性。该画在以宣扬国威、中兴为主旨的历史政治画传统中地位独特。