Explaining Taiwan's Revisionist Diplomacy

Taiwan is a revisionist power. Its independence movement challenges a vital status-quo interest of mainland China's opposition to a de jure Taiwan declaration of independence and maintaining, however ambiguously, Taiwan's commitment to the ‘one-China’ formulation. Why is it that a small and vulnerable island off the coast of a great power has continued to challenge the vital interest of that great power and risk war? Adopting a ‘levels of analysis’ approach to Taiwan's mainland policy, this paper addresses this question by examining four prevalent explanations for Taiwan's revisionist diplomacy: (1) the mainland deterrent is ineffective, reflecting Taiwan doubts about either mainland capabilities or mainland resolve to wage a retaliatory war; (2) in an example of the security dilemma in alliance politics, US commitment to Taiwan, although aimed at deterring PRC use of force, encourages Taiwan to challenge the status quo because the Taiwan leadership is confident of US intervention and US ability to defend Taiwan; (3) because of the development of a ‘Taiwan identity’ and of corresponding domestic political pressures, the Democratic Progressive Party has been compelled to adopt a pro-independence policy; (4) Chen Shui-bian has a personal commitment to Taiwan independence and has been willing to challenge the mainland's interest in one-China, despite risk of heightened conflict and regardless of domestic political considerations.     

China's New Assertiveness in the South China Sea

China's new assertiveness in the South China Sea has arisen from the growth of its military power, its ‘triumphalism’ in the wake of the Western financial crisis and its heightened nationalism. The other littoral states of the South China Sea have been troubled by the opacity of Chinese politics and of the process of military decision-making amid a proliferation of apparently separately controlled maritime forces. The more active role being played by the United States in the region, in part as a response to Chinese activism, has troubled Beijing. While most of the ASEAN states have welcomed America as a hedge against growing Chinese power, their economies have become increasingly dependent upon China and they don't want to be a party to any potential conflict between these two giants. The problem is that there is no apparent resolution to what the Chinese call, in effect, these ‘indisputable disputes’.     

‘I don't know’ in public opinion surveys in China: Individual and contextual causes of item non‐response

Why do some people say ‘I don't know’, ‘I have no opinion’, or simply refuse to say anything in a public opinion survey? The Western literature on public opinion research suggests two major types of causal factors for the non‐response: the respondent's individual characteristics (e.g. age, education, and occupation), and the survey's contextual characteristics (e.g. the length of the survey, the nature of the question, and the setting of the interview). The emphasis, however, has been on the individual factors. This study applies these theoretical predictions to a pool of 14 survey data collected in China during the 1980s. The results show that both the individual and contextual factors are equally important in determining the occurrence of non‐response. In particular, farmer respondents, questions involved a politically sensitive topic, and surveys sponsored by a government agency are more likely to cause ‘I don't know’ answers. Interaction analysis provides some preliminary evidence to suggest that lack of cognitive ability may be a primary source of non‐response on knowledge‐related questions while fear of political consequences may be responsible for non‐response on political sensitive questions. Based on the findings, we discuss the implications for analysis and interpretation of Chinese survey data.     

China–Africa Cooperation: promises,practice and prospects

Chinese engagement in African states has increased tremendously over the last decade, much in line with Chinese globalisation strategies and supported by state encouragement and financial support. The size and potential of China as a world power leads to the level of expectations the country faces from the developing world. However, some elements of these expectations are also created through political discourses which emphasise differences with Western countries. The types of promises that the Chinese leadership makes to create such enthusiastic welcome amongst African political leaders are linked closely to the discourse on South–South cooperation. Albeit different from Western development assistance promises and parallel attempts to produce moderate expectations, the current discourse is thus partly sowing the seeds for future disappointment. This article takes a closer look at the discussions around South–South cooperation in China–Africa relations and at key rhetorical features (‘mutual benefit’; ‘non-interference’) and at the practice of this cooperation. It concludes that the Chinese discourse is creating large public expectations in African countries and while China delivers on many projects, its impact on development is less certain. The overall development success of this strategy builds on longer-term success and is implicitly linked to the occurrence of more reforms in Africa. Chinese policy thus ‘bets on the future’ in their foreign relations with Africa; the success of this strategy is dependent on political circumstances among the partners that are largely beyond Chinese control. In a number of cases, it can thus be expected that currently up-beat political rhetoric is going to meet obstacles that will require adjustments in a discourse that, in its current form, might undermine Chinese credibility if not the core elements of South–South cooperation altogether.     

The Shi Tao Case: its development in Mainland China

The Chinese government's imprisonment of Mainland journalist Shi Tao on the basis of evidence provided by Yahoo! aroused great concern both in Mainland China domestically and internationally. Being a multinational corporation with a huge number of users of its services, Yahoo!'s ‘assistance’ to the Chinese authorities in the prosecution of Shi Tao has become the focus of discussions, while a detailed discussion of the Shi Tao case itself is lacking. Based on the litigation documents of the Shi Tao case that are available in the public domain, and news reports and commentaries relating to this case, this paper aims at filling this gap by presenting a detailed account of the development of the Shi Tao case in Mainland China.     

Why China has been successful in attracting foreign direct investment: A transaction cost approach

An important factor that has contributed significantly to China's economic growth over the past two decades has been the dramatic increase of foreign direct investment in China. Based on the observation that overseas Chinese have been the dominant supplier of foreign direct investment in China, this paper employs the transaction cost approach to provide an explanation as to why China has been successful in attracting foreign direct investment. It first describes and analyzes the economic ‘institution’ in China. Then it shows that overseas Chinese have a competitive advantage in investing in China because they have the experience and knowledge of operating their business in an ‘institution’ that is similar to the ‘institution’ in China. Finally, the paper argues that some policies in China, such as the flexible contractual forms (particularly joint ventures) and the establishment of special economic zones, further reduce the transaction cost of doing business in China and contributed to attracting foreign direct investment.     

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.     

Bashing ‘the Chinese’: contextualizing Zambia's Collum Coal Mine shooting

The 2010 shooting of 13 miners at Zambia's small, privately-owned ‘Chinese’ Collum Coal Mine (CCM) has been represented by Western and Zambian politicians and media as exemplifying the ‘neo-colonial’ and ‘amoral’ practices of ‘China’ and ‘the Chinese’ in Africa. CCM has been used to provide a sharp contrast to the supposed ways of the Western firms that own most of Zambia's mines. Embedded in racial hierarchy and notions of strategic competition between the West and China, the discourse of the CCM shootings further shapes conceptions of global China and Chinese overseas. While examining all the oppressive conditions that have given rise to protest at the mine, we contextualize the shooting and subsequent conflicts. In analyzing CCM's marginal and troubled development, we discuss aspects of the 2010 shooting incident known to miners and union leaders, but ignored by politicians and media. We look at the shooting's political fallout, focus also on the epilogue that was the 2012 CCM riot—in which one Chinese person was murdered and several others seriously injured—and trace the sometimes violent discontent manifested at other foreign-owned mines in Zambia since their privatization in the late 1990s. The empirical data for this detailed study derive from hundreds of documentary sources and interviews with union leaders, workers, officials and others in Zambia from 2011 to 2013.     

The Development of Outward FDI Regulation and the Internationalization of Chinese Firms

The Investment Development Path (IDP) model has been widely accepted for illustrating the relationship between the inward and outward foreign direct investment (FDI) positions of a country and its economic status based on the data from developed economies. In recent years, however, outward FDI from developing economies has increased dramatically and it has been argued that institutions are ‘forefront’ factors in addition to the economic index. In this article, we use statistical data from China, which has gone through dramatic regulation reform and FDI development, to test the validity of the IDP model. We also trace the history of Chinese FDI regulation development to answer the following question: in what way are regulations important for FDI in different periods? We use Lenovo as a case study to show how a Chinese firm ‘avoids’ and ‘adapts to’ regulation changes. We find that the FDI development of China still follows the IDP model; however, the Chinese government has accelerated the whole process through active regulation reform. In a transition economy such as China, FDI co-evolves with the regulation, and the firms which can influence or foresee the policy changes can prosper considerably.     

The Ascendency of State-owned Enterprises in China: development,controversy and problems

The state sector still plays an important role in China's economy. One of the key development phenomena characterizing the Chinese economy is the rapid ascendency of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and the resurgence of the state. The strength of China's SOEs is projected in the centrally administrated state-owned enterprises (CSOEs). They are the backbone of the national economy, spearheading national economic development and Beijing's ‘going-out’ strategy. The CSOEs have expanded their reach and increased their power, domestically and globally. In seeking to boost local GDP growth, the eastern provinces in China have joined the western provinces in a fierce contest to attract investment from SOEs. Nevertheless, the rapid ascendency of the SOEs has brought many negative consequences for China's economic, social and political development by causing conflict with the market-oriented development direction of Chinese economic reform and hindering fair competition between state-owned and non-state-owned enterprises.     

History,Tradition and the China Dream: socialist modernization in the World of Great Harmony

How will China influence world politics in the twenty-first century? Many people answer this question by looking to Chinese history, and particularly to traditional models of Chinese world order. This essay seeks to complicate this question by asking which history, and which tradition? While it is common to look at China's pre-modern history as ‘tradition’, this essay argues that we also need to appreciate how ‘socialism’ is treated as a tradition alongside Chinese civilization. It does this by examining how China's public intellectuals appeal to two seemingly odd sources: Mao Zedong's 1956 speech ‘Strengthen Party Unity and Carry Forward Party Traditions’, and the ‘Great Harmony’ passage from the two millennia-old Book of Rites. It will argue that these two passages are employed as a way of salvaging socialism; the ideological transition thus is not from communism to nationalism, but to a curious combination of socialism and Chinese civilization. This new socialist/civilization dynamic integrates equality and hierarchy into a new form of statism, which is involved in a global competition of social models. Or to put it another way, what these two passages have in common is not necessarily a positive ideal, but a common enemy: liberalism, the West and the United States.     

The rise and decline of China's export processing zones

Accepting the Grindle/Thomas argument that developing states enjoy a high degree of autonomy, this article takes a case study approach to analyze the dynamics of Chinese foreign economic policy. The article posits that contending elites coalesced around particular visions of economic development, which have been the major variable affecting the Chinese export processing zone (EPZ) policy. Thus the current decision to rescind SEZ preferences is based on the elites’ decision to ‘deepen’ China's outwardly‐oriented development.     

Fiscal Federalism: a refined theory and its application in the Chinese context

China's central–local relations have been marked by perpetual changes amidst economic restructuring. Fiscal decentralization on the expenditure side has been paralleled by centralization on the revenue side, accompanied by political centralization. Hence, our understanding of China's fiscal relations is not without controversy. This paper aims to make a theoretical contribution to the ongoing debate on ‘fiscal federalism’ by addressing crucial questions regarding China's central–local fiscal relations: first, to what extent do Chinese central–local fiscal relations conform to fiscal federalism in the Western literature? Second, are there any problems with existing principles of fiscal federalism and, if so, how to refine them? Third, how are refined principles relevant to the Chinese case and what policies should the Chinese government pursue in the future? Based on an in-depth and critical review of the theories on fiscal federalism, we develop a refined prototype of fiscal federalism. The model shows that quasi-traditional fiscal federalism is a much closer reality in China, while we argue that the refined fiscal federalism should be the direction of future reform in China.     

Identity,Sovereignty, and Economic Penetration: Beijing's responses to offshore Chinese democracies

Investigating how the PRC responds to democratization in Taiwan and Hong Kong, this paper argues that the Chinese Communist leadership has mainly developed three strategies in managing the complicated crises, including Beijing's own legitimacy crisis and the integration crisis of the Chinese nation, caused by the rise of offshore Chinese democracies. These strategies are: identity politics, sovereignty politics, and economic penetration. With ‘identity politics’, Beijing identifies ‘identification with the Communist leadership’ as the sole Chinese national identification, and utilizes the nationalistic passions of mainland and even overseas Chinese people against democrats in Taiwan and Hong Kong, by labeling the latter as ‘separatists’ or ‘national traitors’. Further, Beijing defines ‘sovereignty’ in a way in which the ‘central’ government monopolizes all possessions of the nation, and excludes ‘people's sovereignty’ from the politics of national reunification or the ‘one country, two systems’ model actualization. While appealing to both ‘soft power’ based in ‘patriotic nationalism’ and ‘hard power’ embedded in national sovereignty, however, the Chinese regime also mobilizes business resources and opportunities provided by China's growing economic power and China's dominance in Greater Chian economic integration for its political purposes of curbing offshore Chinese democracies.     

Dispersive Containment: a comparative case study of labor politics in central China

Why is there no large-scale labor movement out of intense labor conflicts in current China? Based on a comparative case study of two groups of workers—state workers vs. temporary workers—this paper is an attempt to explore the concrete processes and mechanisms of workers' struggles—how they navigated among street protests, office petitions and court prosecutions through their interaction with state agencies. The argument is that different workers obtained different symbolic rewards instead of material concessions, based on their different social positions and historical trajectories. Unlike the classical ‘fragmentation’ argument which attributes the working class's inaction to its internal divisions, this argument focuses on the interaction between the differentiated workers and the local state agents, during which the workers lost their radical momentum and became subjected to the state's peaceful taming based on the workers' differences. This is a process called ‘dispersive containment’, i.e. dissipating the labor conflicts through divergent symbolic treatment of working-class protest without granting material rewards to them.     

One Formula,Two Experiences: political divergence of Hong Kong and Macao since retrocession

Since the return of Hong Kong's sovereignty to the People's Republic of China, the territory's political development has diverged from that of Macao. The poverty of leadership, state–society confrontations, deinstitutionalization and Beijing's explicit intervention have marked Hong Kong's political development from 1997 to 2004. Since April 2004, the Hong Kong governing style has converged with that of Macao in terms of its pragmatism. Although Macao's political development is characterized by leadership finesse, state–society partnership and institutionalization, its relatively weak civil society and lack of democratic reforms are by no means an attractive ‘one country, two systems’ model to Taiwan; nor does Hong Kong's ‘one country, two systems’ appeal to the Republic of China. Yet, the political corruption and chaos that punctuate Taiwan's democracy have failed to have any positive demonstration effect on Hong Kong and Macao. While the models of Hong Kong and Macao are bound to diverge from that of Taiwan, political development in the two Chinese Special Administrative Regions is gradually converging.     

China Goes to Africa: a strategic move?

Entering the twenty-first century, particularly under the reign of Hu Jintao, China began to pursue an increasingly pro-active diplomacy in Africa. Most analysis on China's offensive diplomacy in Africa focuses on Beijing's thirst for energy and raw materials, and for economic profits and benefits. That is why it is often called ‘energy diplomacy’ or ‘economic diplomacy’ as if China, just like Japan in the 1980s, became another ‘economic animal’. But if one looks at the history of the PRC's foreign policy, Beijing has seldom pursued its diplomacy from purely economic considerations. Is this time any different? This article exams China's diplomacy in Africa from a strategic and political perspective such as its geo-strategic calculations, political and security ties with African countries, peacekeeping and anti-piracy efforts in the region, support for African regionalism, etc. It argues that China's diplomatic expansion in Africa, while partially driven by its need for economic growth, cannot be fully understood without taking into consideration its strategic impulse accompanying its accelerating emergence as a global power. Africa is one of China's diplomatic ‘new frontiers’ as exemplified by new Chinese leader Xi Jinping's maiden foreign trip to Africa in 2013.     

Learning to Rise Peacefully? China and the security dilemma

The People's Republic of China's turbulent experience during the Cold War (1949–1991) has been followed by a remarkably tranquil period. Although conflict and crisis have certainly not been completely absent in the post-Cold War era, the PRC has managed to undertake three decades of ‘peaceful rise’ or ‘peaceful development’. What explains this remarkably peaceful great power ascent? Prominent scholars, such as Thomas Christensen and Iain Johnston, stress the utility of the security dilemma in understanding the PRC's security behavior since the end of the Cold War. Can the PRC's peaceful rise in recent decades be attributed to a realization of the centrality of the security dilemma in great power politics acquired during the Cold War? This paper concludes that the security dilemma does not seem central to China's thinking about its relations with other powers, including the United States.     

‘Place’ Construction: innovative reworking of fiction in recent Chinese films

How can film become a tool of ‘conservation of remembrance’ and be a part of rescuing and rebuilding of cultural and communal memories? Taking a cue from recent ecologically oriented debate on modernity, this paper will focus on memories through films on rural localities that intently counter the trauma of urban migration and dislocation in and around local ‘dwellings’. By looking at recent Chinese films like Dai Sijie's Little Chinese Seamstress and Huo Jianqi's Postmen in the Mountains, I discuss the directors' emotive re-imaging of local and folk architecture and landmarks so as to dispel feelings of displacement resulted from frenzied urban booming, and posit an emotive ‘embedding’ linking urban migrants to their nostalgic home dwellings. These visual narratives consciously negotiate over the emotive terrains between memoirs of local landscape and nagging issues of poverty and backwardness, between tourist exoticism and ‘emotion pictures’, between progress and preservation, and between the lure of global consumer culture and the beckoning of local and nascent ‘dwellings’.     

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.