‘Peaceful Evolution’, ‘Regime Change’ and China's Political Security

This article explores the enduring impact of the Western strategy of ‘peaceful evolution’ (heping yanbian) on China's political security. This non-military strategy is given an added significance in an era of the lone superpower, when American military might can provide the buttress. ‘Peaceful evolution’ can also overlap with the US notion of ‘regime change’, which often entails military intervention to bring about a desired political transformation in a particular state. Specifically, the strategy of ‘peaceful evolution’ still constitutes a serious threat to China because it needs to continue opening up to the West for the sake of economic modernisation.     

Nationalistic feelings and sports: The incident of the overseas Chinese protest against NBC's coverage of the centennial Olympic games

In NBC's coverage of the 1996 Summer Olympic Games Opening Ceremony, Bob Costas’ remarks about Team China invited furious and persistent protests from the overseas Chinese. The protests, which were chiefly based on situational ethics, garnered an extensive grassroots support and continued for weeks after the Atlanta Olympics had finished. Under pressure from the protestors, NBC made a public apology. In response to the protests and NBC's apology, the US media expressed strong discontent. The arguments were basically supported by political correctness. Thus, situational ethics collided with political correctness. Although the protest against NBC appeared to be an accidental incident, a careful review of the incident and the opinions voiced by both sides reveals that the anger of the overseas Chinese with NBC, which justified itself in a number of ways, bears a variety of social and political implications, and that the US media's position has also been justified by the norms that have been formed over the past few years and accepted by the media and the majority of the American public alike. An explanation for the causes of the protest incident begs an in‐depth analysis of broad social and political factors.     

Temporal,Spatial and Functional Governance of China's Reform Stability

Governance is a hot topic in China, as well as among political scientists. Ways of thinking about it can be improved. This essay offers a ‘neo-functionalist’ method to test for successful or unsuccessful governance of reform stability in China. It takes account of the need for participation in effective governance. Steering a state (or any part of a state) requires attention to multiple sizes of polity—especially several medial sizes in a country as large as China. Governance has varied over time during the ‘reform’ era, when anti-reform conservatives have remained important in many nested political networks. The paper shows variation of governance over time, over sizes of polity and over four sample governance functions: managing the economy, maintaining orderly stability, linking ‘social’ parts of the polity to the government, and choosing cadres. It shows how these categories exhaust a logical field that is at least implicit in any analysis of governance roles, and it suggests the value of a ‘circulation of elites’ paradigm when thinking about governance success or failure.     

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’.     

Americans and the Rise of China as a World Power

The rapid ascendency of China has attracted considerable attention from American scholars, policymakers, and media. Yet what does the American public think about the rise of China as a world power? In this paper we use survey data collected by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and other organizations to explore the nature and causes of Americans' views. It turns out that most Americans are well aware of the rise of China. Some are apprehensive about that rise, chiefly for national security (rather than economic) reasons, and many favor a degree of off-shore ‘balancing’ of the sort that realists recommend. But few Americans want to actively work to limit the rise of China. Very few favor the use of troops to defend Taiwan. Very few favor a nuclear-armed Japan. Large majorities of Americans take stands more akin to those of neo-liberals than realist theorists, favoring cooperation and peaceful engagement with China.     

Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Regional Identity Formation from the Perspective of the Central Asia States

This paper reviews the perceptions of the CA states (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan) towards the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and conceptualises the CA states' motivations and concerns in engaging in cooperation within the SCO vis-à-vis China. The message that this paper aims to deliver is that, for the majority of the CA leadership and public, China within the SCO represents the CA states' ‘other’, with decolonising but increasingly dominating features. These perceptions of China in the CA region elucidate the ways in which China's involvement in Central Asia has a paradoxical and contradictory impact on the potential for the SCO to move beyond functionalism and towards the creation of a broader SCO identity. Consequently, the future of the SCO may be more limited than the West fears and Central Asia hopes.     

The ‘China Threat’ through the Lens of US Print Media: 1992–2006

China scholars have examined the ‘China threat’ theory from various theoretical perspectives, offered a range of explanations for the theory's emergence and forecast the potential implications for US–China relations. However, few scholars have empirically studied the ‘China threat’ theory through the lens of the US media. This is a critical oversight, because the media plays a pivotal role in shaping US public opinion and US foreign policy, and the media is a key channel for ‘China threat’ dissemination and popularization. This study seeks to redress this oversight by empirically examining ‘China threat’ coverage in the US print media over a 15-year period from 1992 to 2006. We use content-analysis methodology to systematically collect, code and analyze ‘China threat’ data from five major US newspapers and to track the frequency and content of this coverage over time.

Our analysis reveals many interesting patterns in ‘China threat’ media coverage. First, the initial emergence of ‘China threat’ arguments in the US print media corresponded with the sharp upward turn in China's economic growth rates in the early 1990s. However, since the early 1990s, ‘China threat’ coverage has not mirrored China's steady growth. Rather, the media coverage was cyclic, featuring three key peaks (1996, 2000 and 2005) followed by subsequent declining interest. Second, our analysis reveals that the focus of these stories also varied over time. Perceptions of China as a political/ideological threat dominated media coverage in the earlier years (1992–1994) but steadily declined after 1995 and totally disappeared from the US print media after 2001. Perceptions of China as a military/strategic threat replaced political/ideological concerns in 1995, and the military focus has dominated media coverage ever since. Perceptions of China as an economic/trade threat persisted steadily throughout the 15-year time period with a clear uptick in recent years. We conclude this analysis by turning to the literature on realism, agenda setting and information processing to offer possible explanations for these empirical trends.     

The Localism of Local Leadership Cadres in Reform Shanxi

The changing face of China's politics is to be found as much in the cadre force as in the categories of ‘new rich’ engendered by economic reform and rapid development. A series of interviews undertaken in 1996 and 1997 with local cadres—at sub-provincial, county and section levels—in Shanxi Province provides evidence as to the extent of change and continuity in their social backgrounds, careers and political attitudes. Analysis focuses in particular on five common hypotheses about the cadre force in reform China: that they are conservative upholders of the status quo; a priviligentsya; imposed ‘from without’; the source of a ‘new class'; and one which has come in the reform era to be dominated by ‘technocrats' (rather than former revolutionaries). Though local political and administrative leadership in the 1990s appears to have become more localist, and even in some senses parochial, such analysis must be kept in perspective. The local cadre force is considerably less local, parochial and ‘privileged’ than their counterpart local business elites; and the agency of the provincial organisation of the Chinese Communist Party is still very much in evidence.     

Breaking News,Media Coverage and ‘Citizen's Right to Know’ in China

This study examines the Chinese media's coverage of the Iraq War and SARS in 2003, that of CCTV in particular, and discusses the ‘citizen's right to know’ which became popularised in China during these two breaking news events. After delineating the moves that CCTV has been making, the paper argues that in the face of globalisation of information the party-state is actively involved in pursuit of image reconstruction both at home and internationally, and of having a voice in the new world order. Findings show that although the Chinese media do not lack the capacity to honor the ‘citizen's right to know’, the coverage of breaking news is determined by the state's perception of a given situation.     

Patrolling Harmony: pre-emptive authoritarianism and the preservation of stability in W County

Today, with social protests a daily phenomenon in China, the Party-state’s survival hinges upon its institutional capacity to prevent, monitor, process information on, and overcome real and potential challenges. Over the past decade, the Communist Party has consistently stressed the critical importance of ‘stability preservation’ (weiwen) as central to ensuring the longevity of the authoritarian regime. Drawing upon intensive interviews and archival research, this article looks into the stability-preservation system in W County in North China. By exploring the institutional configuration, work mechanisms, daily activities and operational principles of the stability-preservation apparatus in the county, the author seeks to gain insight into the PRC regime’s mythical operations of ‘system maintenance’ and the ways in which the Party-state exerts control over society.     

How East Asians View the Rise of China

Its newly acquired status as the world's second largest economy has entitled China to a more prominent role in global affairs, and increasingly, its behavior has drawn scrutiny from the world in ways that the country is ill-prepared for. The attention to China's rise, however, focuses not only on its economy but also on other aspects, including its military, diplomatic moves, domestic politics and its ‘soft power’, namely, its own image or self-projection and the world's perception or attitudes toward China. And yet, there has been no systematic investigation to evaluate how the world views a rising China. In this article, the authors applied the latest dataset from the Asian Barometer Survey to investigate whether East Asians recognize and welcome the rise of China. The findings suggest that geographical and cultural proximity have a great impact on people's perception of China. Countries which are territorially adjacent or culturally close to China tend to regard China as the most influential country in Asia. With the exception of Japan and Mongolia, most Asian countries hold positive views about the impact of China on the region. However, such benign evaluations are weaker in countries which have potential security conflicts with China, such as Taiwan and South Korea, when only the bilateral impact is considered. The overall picture shows that the rise of China has been largely recognized and welcomed by East Asians, despite some apprehension about China's strategic intentions to its neighboring countries.     

The Political Economy of Compassion: China's ‘charity supermarket’ saga

With a focus on Tianjin, this article examines the recent widespread establishment of ‘charity supermarkets’ in China's cities. Inspired by the example of certain ‘thrift shops’ in the US, charity supermarkets were set up for the purpose of assisting the urban poor. Several contrasting contemporary discourses within China concerning poverty, charity, business, and the proper roles of the market, state, and community in the delivery of social welfare are explored. The differing perspectives revealed throw an interesting light on why China's charity supermarkets have not, so far, developed as anticipated. This interesting urban social experiment is analyzed as a case study in the potential to achieve effective ‘mutual empowerment’ of state and society in the contemporary Chinese context.     

Guiding Public Opinion through Social Agenda-Setting: China's media policy since the 1990s

Guidance of public opinion (yulun daoxiang) became the buzzword of the Chinese government's media policy from the 1990s. I illustrate this idea through borrowing the concept of agenda-setting from media studies. Partly, its introduction was a response to the crisis of the propaganda model in the mid-1980s. Recognizing its declining ability to control what people think, the party state shifted its focus from political ideology to social agenda. The guidance of public opinion is indirect, flexible and subtle in nature. It allows the state-controlled media to address people's daily concerns. Also, it realizes that responsiveness to public opinion is the key to guiding that opinion effectively. The media need to guide public opinion ‘correctly’, so as to promote political unity, social stability, and boost morale. An argument is advanced that the party state seeks to accomplish attention management through agenda-setting.     

From functional integration to structural readjustment: Taipei–Beijing relations and the role of the United States

Regardless of the continued stalemate in the political arena, trade and economic interactions between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait have increased steadily. Both aggregate data and the results of survey research have testified to the existence of functional integration of the two societies across the Taiwan Strait. In addition to functional integration, structural readjustments have also been made by political authorities both in Taipei and Beijing so as to facilitate continuity of trade and economic relations. These types of mutual accommodations include: establishing proper ‘unofficial’ agencies on both sides to serve as instruments of practical contacts and negotiation; the more flexible definition of ‘One China’ by Beijing; and the opening of ‘small links’ between Quemoy and Amoy by Taipei. Beijing's refusal to grant Taipei any official diplomatic status and Taipei's reluctance to accept the ‘One China’ principle remain major obstacles to cross‐Taiwan Strait relations. The United States will continue playing a key role in future cross‐Strait relations. Beijing seems to be content, at least temporarily, to maintain cordial relations with the United States in exchange for the latter's adherence to the ‘One China’ principle and rejection of the option of Taiwan independence. Whether Taipei will use enhanced US commitment to Taiwan's security to strike a better deal with Beijing for gradual cross‐Strait integration or to utilize increased American protection to move onto the separatist road will be affected by domestic politics in Taiwan, future US policy toward to the island, and Beijing's response to Taipei's demand for security and international recognition.     

A marginal return?—The problematic in Zhang Chengzhi's reinvention of ethnic identity

Amidst frantic economic and social changes in China today, Zhang Chengzhi, like most other humanists, must redefine the humanist role and reconfigure his individual identity accordingly. What he does is to rediscover his ethnic identity as a Muslim Chinese, which rehearses a problematic shared by other humanists: self‐reinvention must be contested and negotiated via social contingency and acculturation; one cannot renew a cultural entity without recourse to ‘the other‘—an allegorical subject, a suppressed ethnicity or a transcendental self. Zhang overcomes the void of a disoriented self by first recounting the muted history of Jahriyya Muslims (in his book History of the Soul) from the narrative stance of ‘a defamiliarized self and then engaging the primordial with the circumstantial in his effort to evoke the obscured awareness of his ethnic root. In his next book The Heroes’ Paths in Wilderness, Zhang recaptures key moments of his recuperation from the disoriented self through his psychoanalytic diagnosis of Lu Xun, his mirror image. The dialogic probing at the other in fact locates himself in the paradox between the historicity of the ethnic identity and the spirituality of a transcendent self. But his ambiguity toward a self/other reversal leaves us in question about his readiness to continue this fluid, open‐ended interaction and his ability to avert possible pitfalls of ethnocentrism.     

Television News as Political Ritual: Xinwen Lianbo and China’s journalism reform within the Party-state’s orbit

Besides being the most influential television news program with the largest viewership in China, Xinwen Lianbo (Television News Simulcast) also boasts of unique political value in the Chinese media landscape. Each and every change in form the program has adopted since its first broadcast in 1978, has been a reflection of a certain aspect or element of the arch of political reform in the country, and has been widely interpreted as such, thus making it ‘the toughest nut to crack’ in news reform. Throughout its 35 years of history, by striving to represent, maintain, adapt and disseminate the established ideological framework, thus ensuring political reform has progressed at a cautious and gradual pace acceptable to the ruling party, Xinwen Lianbo has proven to be a great example of the construction of political reality by journalistic text on the symbolic level. This article adopts the methodology of new social history with semi-participatory observation as it combs through the evolution of Xinwen Lianbo over 35 years, in an attempt to explore the patterns and paths of Chinese journalistic reform and the factors that have come to shape this journey in the broader context of political reform in China.     

Homeowners United: the attempt to create lateral networks of homeowners' associations in urban China

Under the slogan of ‘weiquan’ (defending our rights), homeowners in urban China are increasingly prepared to stand up for their rights of ownership, often through non-confrontational actions organized by homeowners' associations (yeweihui). There is also a growing concern for the need to create collective platforms on which homeowners' associations can support one another, muster their collective resources against powerful developers and lobby for status as legitimate organizations. The activists involved in this work are well aware of its political sensitivity in a regime that is antagonistic towards autonomous organizations, which are seen as posing a threat to its hegemony. Based on a case study in Guangzhou, this paper traces the tactics that housing activists have employed to create horizontal cooperation among homeowners' associations to defend their rights and devise ‘boundary-spanning’ strategies that exploit divisions within the state apparatus. The Guangzhou union of homeowners' associations can be regarded as an experiment in organizational infrastructure which has far-reaching implications. This study sheds light on the complexities as well as the institutional fluidity of state–society interactions in contemporary urban China.     

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.     

Law Guanxi: MNCs,state actors,and legal reform in China

Since 1978, China has opened itself to foreign direct investment and has undertaken significant legal reform, especially in the area of international commercial arbitration. I analyze the roles that foreign actors and state officials have played in changing Chinese legal institutions such as the Chinese International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission (CIETAC) and personal relations, or guanxi. 1 ^1. La guanxi is a Chinese expression, meaning ‘to pull strings (to get things done)’. View all notes Foreign investors, attorneys, and non-governmental organizations are helping China to adopt formal commercial arbitral institutions that follow international norms. In that sense, foreign actors are contributing to rule of law in China. Yet, foreign investors also attempt to use guanxi to get around central regulations, thereby contributing to informal legal institutions. The combination of guanxi and formal legal institutions follows a model of path dependent institutional change. I use the terms, ‘layering’ and ‘bricolage’ to elucidate the ways that actors combine existing institutions with new legal forms introduced by foreign investors, attorneys, and NGOs.     

Disenchanted Presents,Haunted Pasts,and Dystopian Futures: deferred millennialism in the cinema of Meng Jinghui

Meng Jinghui's Chicken Poets (2002) presents a postmodern meditation on the state and fate of Chinese cultural production, intellectual discourse, and social relations at the turn of the century and the millennium. Albeit released two years after 2000, it retains symptomatic traits of the fin-de-siècle and millennial mentality and is therefore examined as an instance of ‘deferred’ or ‘residual’ millennialism. As typical of such narratives, it merges visions of hope and horror, dream and disaster. The film is founded on a dialogic intersection of multiple ‘time–spaces’ of signification, each providing a separate locus of reflection and critique. Besides disclosing distinct discursive targets, the structural interplay of these different chronotopes also establishes generic distinctions within the narrative. Chicken Poets relates to the present as a self-reflexive Künstlerfilm addressing the conflict of creation and commodity in times of mechanical reproduction and mediated stardom. Its enquiry into the past triggers ghostly resurrections and nostalgic visions of compensation and resistance. Its imagination of the future generates apocalyptic fantasies of disaster while disclosing prospects of redemption.