Performance Legitimacy,State Autonomy and China's Economic Miracle

Theories that explain post-Mao China's economic success tend to attribute it to one or several ‘successful’ policies or institutions of the Chinese government, or to account for the success from economic perspectives. This article argues that the success of the Chinese economy relies not just on the Chinese state's economic policy but also on its social policies. Moreover, China's economic success does not merely lie in the effectiveness of any single economic or social policy or institution, but also in the state's capacity to make a policy shift when it faces the negative unintended consequences of its earlier policies. The Chinese state is compelled to make policy shifts quickly because performance constitutes the primary base of its legitimacy, and the Chinese state is able to make policy shifts because it enjoys a high level of autonomy inherited from China's past. China's economic development follows no fixed policies and relies on no stable institutions, and there is no ‘China model’ or ‘Beijing consensus’ that can be constructed to explain its success.     

Re-interpreting China's Non-intervention Policy towards Myanmar: leverage,interest and intervention

China's non-intervention policy has long been criticized for prolonging the rule of many authoritarian regimes. Myanmar has become one of the classic examples. As China is expected to become a responsible great power, her behavioral patterns have aroused many concerns. This paper aims to re-interpret China's non-intervention policy. While explaining various constraints on China's capability to intervene in the Myanmar government, it shows how China is making efforts to seek a new intervention policy in dealing with countries like Myanmar. It argues that China's insistence on a non-intervention policy does not mean that China does not want to influence other countries such as Myanmar. To assess Chinese leverage and its non-intervention policy toward Myanmar as well as to supplement the current limited academic discussion on Sino–Myanmar relations, in this paper we first examine Chinese leverage in Myanmar through Burmese local politics, such as the power struggle between the central government and local rebel governments. Second, we disaggregate the Chinese interests in Myanmar into different levels (regional, geo-strategic and international) and discuss how these interests affect China's non-intervention policy. Third, we argue that China has indeed tried to intervene in Myanmar politics, but in a softer manner that contrasts with the traditional Western hard interventions, such as economic sanctions and military interference.     

Market reforms,globalization and social justice in China

The pursuit of social justice is an important goal of public policy in China under socialism. The embrace of market reforms and increasing globalization has radically transformed China's redistribution regime as well as distorted old commitments to social justice. This paper reviews China's attempt to realize the goal of social justice, including its changing rhetoric, strategies and actions. I shall first set out the historical context by adducing the salience of development and justice in the period before and after the market reforms. This will be followed by an analysis of the state reform discourse in justifying market reforms and their function in development and human welfare. An evaluation of social and redistribution policies and their implications, including the intellectual and public debates on efficiency and equity, will be presented. In the final section, recent critiques on the market and worries associated with China's entry into the WTO will be considered.     

Rethinking the Chinese World Order: the imperial cycle and the rise of China

Looking to China's imperial history to understand how China as a great power will behave in the twenty-first century, some scholars have rediscovered the concept of the traditional Chinese world order coined by John K. Fairbank in the 1960s in the reconstruction of the benevolent governance and benign hierarchy of the Chinese Empire, and portrayed its collapse as a result of the clash of civilizations between the benevolent Chinese world order and the brutal European nation-state system. China was forced into the jungle of the social Darwinist world to struggle for its survival. As a result, China's search for power and wealth is to restore justice in an unjust world. China's rise would be peaceful. This article finds that while imperial China was not uniquely benevolent nor uniquely violent, the reconstruction of China's imperial past to advance the contemporary agenda of its peaceful rise has, ironically, set a nineteenth century agenda for China in the twenty-first century to restore the regional hierarchy and maximize China's security by expanding influence and control over its neighborhoods.     

China's Sovereign Wealth Funds: origins,development, and future roles

China has established two of the world's newer large sovereign wealth funds (SWFs): the official China Investment Corporation (CIC), and the non-official and less transparent State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) Investment Company (SIC). Both provide alternative investment opportunities for China's exploding foreign exchange reserves, at US$2.4 trillion at the end of 2009, the largest in world history. This paper will address how China has accumulated its huge and growing foreign exchange reserves, and what roles these reserves, until 2007 managed only by the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE), have played in the establishment and development of China's two new SWFs. We will look specifically at why China's foreign exchange reserves have developed, and how the new SWFs are a part of broader efforts to provide investment alternatives for China's ballooning foreign exchange surpluses, particularly in light of the inflow of ‘hot’ foreign speculative funds. We will then point out some of the difficulties for China's financial officials of SWFs as they try to pursue multiple and sometimes competing goals, set by boards of directors representing different bureaucratic and economic interests, all within the context of a general lack of transparency and a rapidly growing economy. Finally, we will present our conclusions about the future roles of the two SWFs as well as of the policies being developed to decentralize foreign exchange reserve holdings while at the same time not slowing the growth of China's foreign trade surpluses, nor its foreign direct investments, nor its overall economic growth. We will also examine the effects of US-promoted Chinese currency appreciation on the future of China's foreign exchange reserves and its sovereign wealth funds.     

How Do Americans Evaluate China's International Responsibility? An Empirical Assessment

China in recent years has been asked by other major powers to take a greater share in international responsibility in response to the rise in China's national capability. Negative perceptions about how China is dodging its international responsibility exist not only among policy makers around the world, but have spread to worldwide mass publics, especially across the American people. In this article, we apply the dataset from the ‘Americans’ Attitudes toward China Survey' (AACS) to investigate what the American public think of China's international responsibility and which factors explain the varying evaluations from different theoretical perspectives. The results indicate that Americans' negative evaluations of China's international responsibility are associated with poor ratings regarding China's fulfillment of its domestic obligations and apprehension regarding China's potential threat, but has little to do with China's international behavior. To reduce these negative evaluations, China needs to improve its human rights conditions, give people more political rights, and convince the American public of the benevolence of its ascending power. In addition, persistent efforts toward soft-power construction are also very important since Americans who are interested in Chinese culture or knowledge tend not to think that China is dodging its international responsibility.     

The Olympic Effect on American Attitudes towards China: beyond personality,ideology, and media exposure

This paper explores the impact that increased exposure to China during the two and a half weeks of the Beijing Olympics had on American attitudes towards China. A large N longitudinal survey revealed a significant increase in negative attitudes towards China from the beginning to the end of August 2008. Statistical analysis revealed no dominant explanation for this change, however. Instead, personality (openness), ideology (social dominance orientation and right wing authoritarianism), and media exposure each had a small impact on changing attitudes. Further research (including a follow-up experiment manipulating the valence of media coverage of China) suggested both the possibility of an ‘efficiency effect’, whereby China's very success in both hosting and competing in the Olympics generated increased American anxiety about China, and a ‘cheating effect’, whereby stories about underage Chinese gymnasts and deception (e.g. lip synching while another child actually sang during the Opening Ceremonies) diffused broadly through social networks, uniformly and negatively impacting American attitudes towards China.     

Nationalism,Ideology and China's ‘Fourth Generation’ Leadership

This paper examines the extent to which China's ‘Fourth generation’ leadership might be inclined to place a greater emphasis on nationalist rhetoric both in China's international relations and in domestic policy. It explores two different views of nationalism, namely state-centred and popular. With the decline in the public impact of official ideology, the Party–state has given tacit recognition to nationalism as one potential source of regime legitimisation. However, this article argues that by placing the Party at the centre of the official discourse the state-centred view of nationalism restricts the extent to which the Party–state can mobilise nationalist symbolism in support of its leadership and makes the Party vulnerable to criticism from more popular conceptions of nationalism. The priority given to developing the economy means China's leaders must downplay popular criticism which can focus on the negative consequences of China's growing interaction with the wider world. Under China's ‘Fourth generation’ leadership this tension may deepen. China's new leadership are unlikely to resort to ‘wrapping themselves in the flag’ as some commentators have suggested.     

Four Contradictions Constraining China's Foreign Policy Behavior

Beijing's foreign policy behavior is constantly tested by a set of conflicting variables. China views itself as a major power and wants to play a role accordingly in the world arena, while it always lacks an adequate material basis to do so. The open-door policy requires China to be fully integrated into international society, while strong concern over sovereignty makes it difficult for Beijing to embrace some of the mainstream values. China believes in a set of principles in international affairs, while consideration of its national interests causes Beijing to make a pragmatic compromise from time to time. Beijing has long been accustomed to dealing with others in bilateral settings while the post-Cold War era is witnessing a rise of mulilateralism in international politics, which is bringing more and more pressure on China's traditional diplomacy. These variables will continue to constrain China's foreign policy behavior while their influence will decline as a result of rapid change with China both materially and conceptually.     

Chinese Employee Class: an analysis using a three-dichotomy segmentation approach

As the ‘World's Factory’, China now has the biggest worker/employee class in the world. Though this newly emerging social group has captured much attention, relatively few scholars have paid attention to such sociological questions as raised by this paper: rather than referring to such a huge group of almost 500 million people simply as ‘Chinese workers’ or ‘Chinese employees’, can this social class be stratified and in what way? What is the current situation of the employee class in China's contemporary industrial relations? This paper attempts to concisely answer the above questions by proposing a three dichotomy segmentation approach and a review of the existing literature on the matter, providing a broader picture to the readers with regards to the current situations of different employee groups in the context of China's unprecedented transitional economy.     

China and Maritime Cooperation in East Asia: recent developments and future prospects

Future international relations in East Asia are likely to be largely shaped by the maritime strategies and policies of various actors. This paper examines China's policy and behavior in maritime cooperation in the East Asian region in recent years, a topic that has been insufficiently understood. I suggest that while it is necessary and useful to take into account China's naval power, more attention to Chinese intentions and policy on East Asian maritime issues is warranted to arrive at a more balanced, and arguably more accurate, understanding of China's role in East Asian maritime affairs. This paper takes stock of China's changing perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors in maritime cooperation in the region. I describe China's new policy moves in the South China Sea and East China Sea. I also address some of the major Chinese concerns for further maritime cooperation in East Asia. I conclude that while a grand cooperative maritime regime is still not possible from a Chinese perspective, China is likely to agree to more extensive and substantive maritime cooperation in many functional areas, most notably in the non-traditional security arena.     

Comparing Jiang Zemin's Impatience with Hu Jintao's Patience Regarding the Taiwan Issue, 1989–2012

Although the essence of China's Taiwan policy has not changed from the era of Jiang Zemin to the present, the era of Hu Jintao, Jiang's and Hu's attitudes are different. Jiang was impatient with the delay in the unification of China and Taiwan, talking about timetables for unification; however, Hu has so far been patient, saying that he is not afraid of delaying unification. The purpose of this paper is to explain why their attitudes are different. I argue that two factors combine to result in Jiang's impatience and Hu's patience: conflicting ‘perceptions of Taiwan's domestic politics and Taiwan's China policy’ and differing ‘perceptions of the US behavior and attitude regarding Taiwan’.     

Stock market integration in Hong Kong and China

The Hong Kong Stock Exchange currently ranks sixth in terms of trading volumes in the world while China's fledgling securities industry at Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges combined is barely more than 7 years old. With 1997 handover of Hong Kong to China, the securities industries of the two sides ought to integrate into one market. However, the Basic Law governing Hong Kong maintains unchanged British Common Law system as well as the life style of Hong Kong capitalist society, at least for the next 50 years. To understand how the stock exchanges operate under such a situation and how they cooperate in the future is the theme throughout this paper. This paper first describes the market backgrounds separately in Hong Kong and China. It intends to answer how, what and why China needs Hong Kong market and how, what and why Hong Kong, at a different level, needs China's. Then it deals with the interactions or cooperation in the primary market operations. The paper also deals with broader issues such as the RMB convertibility with respect to the integration of the stock exchanges and tries to forecast the future trend in the regional as well as international perspectives. It concludes that as part of the ‘one country, two systems’, the SEHK will be stronger as it has an added value to China's financial window to the world.     

The Rise of China: media perception and implications for international politics

In recent years, the rise of China as an emerging great power has been widely perceived across the world. How has the rise of China been represented over time in the Western news media? Has the image of China as a rising power had any impact on the country's soft power? These questions remain unanswered but answering them is of great significance in helping us understand the impact of the news media on the transformation of international politics in the information age. This paper conducts a longitudinal study to examine the nature of Chinese coverage and explores how the image of a rising China—economically, politically, regionally and globally—has been represented in three transnational newspapers in Europe. It further argues that the Western media coverage of China's rise is as a soft power, which, to some extent, has an impact upon China's foreign relations.     

‘Rise of the Great Powers’=Rise of China? Challenges of the advancement of global history in the People's Republic of China

Ever since it was first broadcasted in 2006, the Rise of the Great Powers, a popular Chinese TV mini-series of 12 episodes, has received great attention both at home and abroad. Some have suggested that the showing of this series marked a new orientation in China's foreign policy and a new perception of its position in the world. Using oral interviews and written works by the historians who masterminded the project, this article analyzes the view of the Chinese historian, and of current Chinese leadership, about the globalizing world today and China's position in and relation to it. Using the documentary as a starting point, it discusses the status quo of world-history study in China today and argues that though receptive to the incentive for globalizing history writing, historical scholarship in China remains grounded in a Eurocentric understanding of modern world history. China's recent economic expansion has paradoxically reinforced this tradition, as the country is bracing for its own world power status.     

An Emerging China and Diasporic Chinese: historicity,state, and international relations

The past decade has seen a growing body of literature on the (re)emergence of China and its implications for the new international order, and this scholarship is accompanied by the attempts from both within and outside of China to establish Chinese schools of international relations (IR). These admirable efforts, however, have been largely state-centric and concerned mainly with the balance of power, with little attention being directed to the diaspora's role in the evolution of China's international relationship and their potential contribution to bridging China studies and international relations theorization. Drawing upon theoretical insights from both IR and diaspora studies and employing a wide range of primary data including archives and personal interviews, this essay examines the diaspora's role (or the lack of it) in China's diplomacy since 1949 and attempts to conceptualize the Chinese experience in an historical and comparative perspective. I argue that historicity and state have played a significant part in shaping the interactions between the diaspora and diplomacy. The Chinese state's resilient capacity in domesticating (potential) diplomatic problems with respect to the diaspora and transforming them into new policy initiatives through facilitating diasporic participation in China's socio-economic and political processes has opened up new venues for the Chinese overseas to be involved in China's diplomacy. This article concludes by considering three different routes in engaging the diaspora with diplomacy at a time of China rising and by calling for strategic integration of diaspora into the emerging discourses on ‘IR theories with Chinese characteristics’.     

The Television Play,Melodramatic Imagination and Envisioning the ‘Harmonious Society’ in Post-1989 China

The television play has been recognized by scholars as the most influential genre in the flourishing television industry in China's new media landscape; yet little critical attention has been given to inquiry of why and how it functions as a dynamic cultural agent in the Chinese people's reconfiguration of their past and imagining of their everyday life. This paper investigates the intriguing socio-historical environment from which the genre emerged and its unique modes of operation by focusing on the television play of sentiment. It demonstrates that the television play embodies the many complex aspects of social forces and relationships contested in China's reform, suggesting, all at once, commercialization in Chinese society, the popular imaginary of morality and the state's conceptualization of a ‘harmonious society’, a strategic policy aiming at maintaining social balance while bypassing some of the thorny political questions in the post-revolution era.     

Learning to Live with the Hegemon: evolution of China's policy toward the US since the end of the Cold War

This paper is designed to review China's efforts to adapt to the post-Cold War world dominated by the United States and to analyze the underlying factors that have shaped such efforts. It attempts to make three points: (1) the adaptation process has been an eventful and difficult one; (2) China's gradual appreciation of the new international reality, the daunting domestic challenges China faces, and China's growing awareness of the implications of its rise for its developmental prospects have helped shape its efforts of adaptation; and (3) in the foreseeable future, if the US does not treat China as an enemy and if the two countries can effectively manage the Taiwan problem, China is likely to continue its efforts to accommodate and cooperate with the US.     

China's Global Search for Energy Security: cooperation and competition in Asia–Pacific

China has adopted a state-centered approach towards energy security to deepen political and commercial relationships with all energy producing nations and to aggressively invest in oil fields and pipelines around the world. Applying this approach to its relations with its Asia–Pacific neighbors has produced mixed results. While China's energy diplomacy has brought about opportunities for cooperation with some of its neighbors, notably some countries in Central Asia and continental Southeast Asia, it has become a source of conflict with some other neighbors, especially those with border disputes over maritime territories which may have rich natural resources. This paper examines China's state-led search for energy security and its implications for China's relations with Asia–Pacific countries.     

Discussion of 'The Rise of China in Chinese Eyes'

In a response to Yan Xuetong's paper, 'The Rise of China in Chinese Eyes', Ted Osius (writing in August 1999) discusses Dr Yan's perspective on Chinese history and the question of whether China's rise will be peaceful. Mr Osius argues that, while we cannot know for certain what China's future holds, the Clinton‐Gore Administration has been clear in its goal of integrating China into the leadership ranks of the world community.