Immigrant parents’ everyday encounters with exclusion and public space mobilities: ‘Some type of force field’

This paper explores everyday feelings of exclusion experienced by Western immigrant parents of preschool aged children in public park playgrounds in Tokyo. These parental feelings of exclusion and unbelonging arose from negative encounters with the majority population where children's visible bodily differences led to unintegrated play. The paper argues that this sense of exclusion is socially problematic as immigrant parents feel negative emotions when using public playgrounds, turn away from local public space mobilities towards online play dates with their countries of origin, and focus more on private home centred play through a style of self-segregation as coping techniques.     

One village one product: evaluations and lessons learnt from OVOP aid projects

The One Village One Product project that originated in Japan's Oita Prefecture is just one component of many official Japanese development assistance projects aiming to promote rural development in more than 30 countries. Not all efforts, however, result in the same level of sustainability. Oita Prefecture built its movement on three principles: local yet global, self-reliance and creativity, and human resources development. The projects that satisfy these principles are generally found to be sustainable. These principles can also be applicable to overseas projects.     

The Sway of Geopolitics,Economic Interdependence and Cultural Identity: why are some Asians more favorable toward China's rise than others?

This article identifies the explanatory sources of Asians' perceptions about China's rise. The authors try to decipher the relative importance of individual-level explanatory variables such as socio-economic satisfaction, cognitive schema, and ideology and political values vis-à-vis that of the country-level structural variables such as geopolitical tension, economic interdependence and cultural identity. The empirical findings suggest that the growing perception that China has the most influence in Asia is more related to individual-level demographic variables which are associated with greater interest in political affairs, despite the fact that there is also some evidence that contextual factors related to economic interdependence also matter. A favorable perception of China's influence, on the other hand, is more associated with a less negative orientation on geopolitical and cultural factors, which both involve long-term historical memory and political feelings. Economic interdependence might engender adversarial feelings against China if the level of interdependence is high enough to cause economic vulnerability.     

Choosing China: public perceptions of ‘China as a model’

This article examines East Asians and Chinese nationals who select ‘China as a model’ of development. The analysis looks at both macro and micro explanations to show that China's standing as a development model is not in sync with its status as a rising global and regional power. At the macro level, the focus is on country-level patterns, while the micro analysis is drawn from the third wave surveys of the Asia Barometer Survey data conducted from 2011 to 2013 in 13 different countries. The findings suggest that political values, history, geography and socio-economic conditions correspond to different views of China as a model and that those outside of China who select the country as a model are quite different from those in China itself.     

Fighting for Migrant Labor Rights in the World's Factory: legitimacy,resource constraints and strategies of grassroots migrant labor NGOs in South China

China's dizzying economic achievement is not mirrored in its labor rights protection record. Migrant workers in particular do not enjoy rights commensurate with their contribution to the economy. The pervasive infringement of labor rights and the failure of the official protective system have jointly created a niche for nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). This article investigates the grassroots migrant labor NGOs in the Pearl River Delta region, an area which has seen unprecedented increases in labor disputes both in terms of quantity and intensity. Making extensive use of in-depth interviews and participatory observations, it examines the strategies and tactics NGOs use for survival and growth in a hostile external environment. This article reveals that administrative illegitimacy and resource shortage have been the two key challenges for grassroots NGOs; in order to survive, they have developed a series of strategies to enhance legitimacy and explore resources. In the meantime, however, antagonistic thinking still drives the government's response to grassroots organizations unless the latter can skillfully balance political ideology and actual operation. Yet, overall, most NGOs still managed to survive despite various difficulties. Reciprocity and mutual trust are of critical importance to peaceful coexistence, if not cooperation, between the state and the grassroots. The building of long-term healthy labor relations in China necessitates more liberal thinking and collaborative governance.     

Restructuring China's State Corporatist Industrial Relations System: the Wenling experience

Intensifying labour conflict in China has posed a serious challenge to the industrial relations system. Under growing pressure, the Chinese government has sought to reform the system but the results are meagre. Among the supposedly successful cases, the development of collective bargaining in Wenling, Zhejiang province has been hailed as a model of labour relations to be replicated elsewhere. Based on a detailed case study of Wenling, this study aims to analyze the process whereby local government reconstructs the industrial relations system by organizing and incorporating the interest of employers and workers, leading to regularized wage growth and reduced labour dispute. This restructuring, the study argues, is designed to create a functional state corporatist system by means of expanding union representation and instituting tripartite collective bargaining. However, the tensions in the state corporatist structure may still undermine any attempt by the government to reconstruct industrial relations.     

America in the Eyes of America Watchers: survey research in Beijing in 2012

Based on an original survey conducted in the summer of 2012 in Beijing, we examine how China's America watchers—IR scholars who work on US-China relations—have viewed China's power status in the international system, US-China relations and some specific US policies in Asia. Our survey shows that almost half of the survey participants thought that America would remain the global hegemon in the next ten years. Meanwhile, a large majority was also optimistic that China is a rising great power, especially in the economic sense, in the world. More than half of the respondents saw Asian military issues, such as the South China Sea issue, as the most difficult problem between China and the US.