Introduction

Abstract

The century-long debate scrutinizing China's cultural heritage and the road to wealth and power (modernization) reached a crescendo in 1988 with the publication of a best-selling book, performances of a six-part series on national television, and soul-searching discussion culminating in the banning of He shang (River elegy, or Deathsong of the river). Cutting to the heart of the emotional issues pertaining to assessment of Chinese tradition and the West, the debate provides insight into the cultural and political conflicts of the era and the democratic movement of 1989 that it helped shape.     

Revolutionary Discourse in Mao's China,by David E. Apter and Tony Saich

Abstract

As early as Edgar Snow's pioneering Red Star over China (1937), Yan'an was seen as the “defining moment” of the Chinese Communists' rise to power. Beginning in 1935, Mao Zedong set his personal imprint on the party as he successfully guided it from the disaster of the Long March to the “Congress of Victors” in 1945. This set the stage for the final showdown with Chiang Kai-shek and the hapless Nationalists in the civil war of 1946-49. With the victory of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1949, the experiences of Yan'an became the blueprint for the reconstruction of China along the lines first laid out in that remote and impoverished town in the northeast.     

K. A. Wittfogel's Marxist studies on China (1926–1939)

Abstract

K. A. Wittfogel is one of the most controversial figures in the field of modern Chinese studies. In the early 1950s he established himself as the leading figure in the academic section of the Cold War. Highlights of his “fight for the Free World” were the publication of “Oriental Despotism” in 1958 and the controversy with Benjamin Schwartz over the “Legend of Maoism” in the opening issue of China Quarterly in 1960. Wittfogel was a renegade, given to apocalyptic battle-cries against real or supposed “communist” studies and theories. He claimed to be the only one in his field who by personal experience knew the communist strategies and tactics and their subversive intentions.     

The Tibetan Self-Immolations as Counter-Securitization: Towards an Inter-Unit Theory of Securitization

This article argues that the Tibetan self-immolations constitute a form of counter-securitization to China’s securitization of the 2008 Tibetan uprising. Theoretically, it argues that securitization theory (1) is too focused on the intra-unit interaction between securitizing elites and audiences, (2) leaves the inter-unit dynamics underdeveloped, and (3) fails to recognize the securitized “other” as an audience. This article theorizes the linkage between unit-level and inter-unit processes by exploiting three concepts: inter-discursivity, identity, and emergency measures. Contrary to existing theories, it shows that even unsuccessful securitizing moves can set off counter-securitizations thanks to audience overlap and inter-discursivity. The Sino-Tibetan interactions around the Tibetan self-immolations uphold these theoretical positions.     

Rejoinder

Abstract

Many of Mr. van Walt's criticisms are based solely on fabrications of his own making. For example, I am accused, twice, of referring to myself as a “scholar” and to my article as “scholarly.” I could find no trace of either. I am further accused of considering all Tibetan refugee accounts as “unreliable.” To be sure, I believe that one cannot base the study of historical events solely on refugee accounts, but that does not make all of these stories “unreliable.” After all, Dawa Norbu, a refugee himself, wrote in Red Star Over Tibet, “I never saw or heard of any case of misconduct by a Red soldier.” I would never argue that this statement was unreliable. We are further told that I refer to Tibetans as Chinese when in the second paragraph of my review I wrote, “… Tibetans [are] only one of 56 minority nationalities.” Chinese citizens yes, ethnic Hans no. A final example, although there are many more, is Mr. van Walt's attempt to attribute to me the opinion that

… the only importance to the Western academic world is that the situation in Tibet can teach us how to eliminate a “mystical religion” and that “it gives clues as to how Peking will integrate a capitalist Taiwan into a Communist China in the future”. (emphasis added)     

Extremists are extremely extreme

Abstract

China's foreign policy during the Cultural Revolution is usually treated as a non-event. Melvin Gurtov in his careful and extremely useful chronological account of China's foreign policy at this time (RAND, RM-5934-PR) still deems it “an aberrant episode” (VII, 83). He describes it as the manifestation of a power struggle between extreme young zealots and implacable older powerholders. “Substantive policy views” are almost beside the point (76). Far Eastern Economic Review (1968 Year Book) also characterizes Cultural Revolution foreign policy as one of “excesses” and “‘extreme’ behavior,” giving anti-foreignism as its content. Anti-foreignism is seen as a deeply felt belief that an attempt to borrow from foreigners has resulted in “manipulation and exploitation” by foreigners. Yung Ho, writing for the Union Research Institue's (URI) Communist China 1967, finds the essence of Mao's thought to be opposition to “anything foreign,” and China's attempt at “propagating Mao-Tse-tung's thought abroad” to be an aggressive policy “even worse than Hitler's rule,” one which inevitably produced setbacks which further isolate China (326–327).     

The gap between the natural and social sciences sometimes leaves the public poorly informed

Abstract

In his book On Human Nature, sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson expresses many of the frustrations of natural scientists, complaining that the intellectual community has failed to recognize the importance of their contributions. He attributes this partly to the natural scientists' lack of literary ability and laments that even those who “step outside scientific materialism to participate in the [dominant] culture” have almost never been able “to close the gap between the two worlds of discourse.” But he directs his main criticism at those who work in the social sciences. He argues that they control the cultural establishment and that their reflections “are devoid of the idioms of chemistry and biology, as though humankind were still in some sense a numinous spectator of physical reality.”     

Anand Patwardhan: Social Activist and Dedicated Filmmaker

In this essay—an earlier version of which was delivered as a lecture at a session cosponsored by Critical Asian Studies and the Alliance of Scholars Concerned about Korea (ASCK) at the annual conference of the Association for Asian Studies, San Diego, California, on 23 March 2013—the author argues the need to go beyond the current state of perilous confrontation and volatility on the Korean Peninsula and examine how and why the current division of the peninsula into North and South has evolved into a “division system.” The author contends that “civic participation” (broadly defined to include business entrepreneurs, corporations, NGOs, and private citizens) is necessary to deal with the durable enormity of the division system. He calls this body of nonstate actors the “third party” (the first two parties being those of North and South Korea). Going beyond strictly Korean affairs, this third party, the author concludes, can play a crucial role in creating a larger framework of East Asian cooperation and solidary.     

The Initiation of the Sino-Indian rivalry

ABSTRACT

Sino-Indian interactions after the mid-19th century had a causal influence on Chinese and Indian elite perceptions. Modern China encountered modern India as an agent of British imperialism. China perceived India as an “imperial” power in the late 1940s by resorting to the availability heuristic while doubting India’s intentions in Tibet/Southeast Asia. By contrast, India viewed China as a fellow victim of colonialism that had sought India’s help during World War II. Consequently, India perceived China as a “partner” in postwar/postcolonial Asia. This interpretation was based on confirmation bias after 1947, despite contradictory Chinese signals. India’s image of China changed only after the 1950–51 invasion/annexation of Tibet. India then ascribed the image of an “expansionist/hegemonic” power to China based on historical analogy. Nevertheless, they carefully calibrated their strategies towards each other in consonance with these images until the 1959 Lhasa Uprising, thereby preventing their relationship from descending into militarized hostilities.     

An introduction to the articles on Indonesia

Abstract

In May 1987, general elections will be held in Indonesia. These will be the fifth such elections since the country's independence in 1945, and the contesting parties will be the government electoral organization, GOLKAR, which convincingly won the last elections, the largely Muslim PPP (Unity Development party), and the small Christian and nationalist PDI (Indonesian Democratic party). After the previous elections in 1982, the Indonesian government made the claim that the proceedings had been “direct, general, free and secret,” and indeed it was difficult to find more than incidental evidence of fraud or manipulation in the conduct of the poll itself. However, this attempt by “Pancasila Democracy” to claim kinship with the Western democratic tradition studiously ignored the context of political restriction which has operated in Indonesia for the last three decades. Since such claims are likely to be revised after the coming elections to suggest that the power of the New Order government of President Suharto rests on the active consent of the people, the editors of the Bulletin have thought it appropriate to devote this issue to a closer examination of the recent political history of Indonesia.     

“Making the Crooked Straight”: China's Grand Strategy of “Peaceful Rise” and its Central Asian Dimension

Abstract

This article argues that China's foreign policy since 1991 has been guided by the evolution of a grand strategy of “peaceful rise” that seeks to ensure China's smooth transition to great power status. Moreover, it suggests that a strategic preoccupation with Central Asia has become an important expression of this grand strategy. Framing these arguments is a third overarching one that postulates that China's foreign policy in Central Asia is not only intimately related to the strategy of “peaceful rise” but also to a particular, historically and geopolitically informed narrative of China's “Inner Asian” power.     

China's troubled culture

Abstract

China has spent the twentieth century at repeated efforts, in Ezra Pound's phrase, to “make it new.” But it has repeatedly fallen back on tightly controlled political power and organization as the only means it knows—in the process always discouraging individual initiative and forestalling free expression of ideas, qualities perceived by those in power as twin threats to the order of the state. The use of military force against Chinese citizens on 4 June 1989 is only the most recent example that China has seldom allowed itself to experience the creative chaos that might arise from a true “hundred flowers” era, a protected arena of competing voices. This, at least, is the theme that tugs at the cuff of each of the books grouped here—two cultural studies, three memoirs, and a manifesto.     

China's industrial revolution: Politics,planning and management, 1949 to the present,by Stephen Andors

Abstract

The study of Chinese industrial development has come a long way since the 1969 publication of Barry Richman's Industrial Society in Communist China (New York: Random House, 1969). Richman recognized that China had begun to “organize conscientiously and vigorously for industrial progress since the beginning of the 1950's.” Unlike some of his predecessors, he did not explain China's industrial growth in terms of mass coercion or swarms of “blue ants” instead, he warned the reader that “in order to understand more fully how Chinese management and Chinese organization function, it is essential to have an understanding of Chinese ideology.” His examples of the use of ideology-e.g., the study of Mao's On Contradiction to help resolve a problem of cost vs. quality in bicycle production-were refreshingly concrete and useful.     

Against the law: Arthur Maimane’s pioneering hard-boiled black detective fiction in Drum Magazine

ABSTRACT

This article sets out to re-examine, and recover, South Africa’s first hard-boiled crime fiction created by a black writer: Arthur Maimane’s crime stories published in Drum magazine in 1953. Maimane wrote a series of stories about a black PI, styled on the American hard-boiled genre for Drum, a popular South African magazine aimed at a black audience, known for its borrowing from American popular culture. Mamaine’s fiction has been widely dismissed by generations of Drum critics, as “derivative” “imitation.” Repositioning the stories within the broader context of crime fiction suggests quite a different reading. Maimane’s stories reveal how tensions between the genre and laws in apartheid South Africa resulted in radical alterations to the hard boiled formula. Since Maimane’s stories precede Chester Himes’s African-American novels, they should be recognized as a pioneering example of black crime fiction that demonstrates the relationship between race and genre.     

Imperialism’s effects on China

Abstract

Three years ago in this journal, James Peck argued that “the professional ideology of America’s China watchers” has tended to blind them to certain approaches to modern Chinese history that might be labelled “revolutionary Marxist” interpretations. As an example, Peck argued that the China watchers have explained China’s nineteenth and early twentieth century difficulties (prolonged economic and military weakness, failed reforms and revolutions) by reference to internal factors (culture, social structure), while a revolutionary Marxist perspective would seek explanations in the effects of imperialism. He provided several examples of the types of effects imperialism may have had on China: “The power of the metropolitan countries to block the formation of vital domestic industries in the dependent countries competitive with their own operations; the domination of mercantile over industrial capital; and the subordination of the economic life of a dependent nation to the severe fluctuations of the primary commodities market.” But he did not have space in his article, which was primarily concerned with a critique of existing work in the China field, to provide a fuller outline of what the imperialism approach to modern China might involve.     

Islam and politics in a Malay state: Kelantan 1838–1969

Abstract

The contention of this book is that it is necessary to study political activity at the level of the common individual. This position is in clear contrast to the common assumption that individuals are ineffectual in asserting their political rights, unaware of political issues and unimportant in the course of national history. Bowen has aimed his study deliberately at the actions and associations of the commoners involved in the Meiji popular rights movement. He focuses upon three gekka jiken (“incidents of intensified violence”)—the Fukushima Incident of 1882 and the Kabasan and Chichibu incidents of 1884—seeking “to learn why they happened; what they tell about general social, economic, and political conditions; and what consequences they had for society and politics as a whole” (p. 6).     

On Fascist Terror in West Bengal — An appeal to the World Press,Calcutta, 23/3/72

Six models of DEMOCRATS (in capital letters) were introduced in this paper: democrat (in italics); “democrat” (in quotation marks); democrat→ “democrat;” democrat→ “democrat”→ democrat; “democrat”→ democrat; and “democrat”→ democrat→ “democrat.” This paper then attempts to explicate which model(s) of DEMOCRATS do Presidents Chiang Ching-kuo and Lee Teng-hui belong to. It was found that Chiang could be regarded as a “democrat,” and Lee, both “democrat” “and democrat”→ democrat. Both of them have to make sure that democratization in Island China can assure its survival as well as create an impact on Mainland China.     

Alexei Navalny and challenges in reconciling “nationalism” and “liberalism”

This article examines the challenges and complexities in the efforts by political activist Alexei Navalny to reconcile “nationalist” and “liberal” modes of thinking in the current Russian environment. After deciphering three major axes of Navalny's narratives on the national question, the author then discusses the social and political context within which the national-democratic (Natsdem) movement was forged. Natsdems, who are simultaneously pro-European and democratic but also xenophobic, and who target an audience among the urban middle classes, reflect a fundamental shift in Russian society. The last part of the article discusses the paradoxes of Navalny's trajectory, in which a failed theoretical articulation between “nationalism,” “democracy,” and “liberalism” nonetheless has translated into a political success.     

Analyzing China's socialist revolution

Abstract

Recent trends in “China scholarship” include two dominant sets of goals and foci in examining China's socialist revolution. Exponents of the more traditional view, represented here by Lucian Pye's Mao Tse-tung, seek to explain it away as a pathological deviation from “normality” in social development. The extremism of Pye's book makes it almost a caricature of the worst in the first trend. By the same token this extremism makes the prejudices and assumptions on which this trend is based easier to perceive than would be the case with other more subtle works. The less traditional and less frequently published view, represented here by Nee and Peck's China's Uninterrupted Revolution attempts to comprehend the Chinese Revolution, historically and philosophically, as a meaningful process directed at increasing human liberation.     

China's Maritime Security and the “Malacca Dilemma”

Abstract

As maritime trading becomes an increasingly important element of the modern Chinese economy, concerns in Beijing are being raised about the safety of vital sea lanes. Central to this thinking has been Hu Jintao's explanation of the “Malacca Dilemma” in late 2003, which describes the problem of sea routes crucial to China's trade, especially the Malacca Straits, being subject to interdiction from another state. At the same time, the international war on terror has also raised the specter of economic terrorism aimed at disrupting commerce via the Straits. Due to the complex nature of these potential threats, there is the temptation for China to address the “Dilemma” unilaterally as the country modernizes its naval forces. However, it remains in Beijing's interests to work both with littoral states and other great powers in ensuring greater security in the Malacca region.