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)     

Urbanization,education, and the politics of space on the Tibetan Plateau

This article provides an introduction to a special collection of five articles showcasing the work of rising scholars in the geography and anthropology of Tibetan regions in China (Eveline Washul, Andrew Grant, Tsering Bum, Huatse Gyal and Duojie Zhaxi, published in Critical Asian Studies 50: 4 and Critical Asian Studies 51: 1). It contextualizes the authors’ contributions in the recent promotion of planned urbanization in Tibetan regions as the key to achieving the “Chinese Dream” under President Xi Jinping. The paper calls attention to these authors’ focus on Tibetan experiences of new urbanization policies and practices, as well as their less-appreciated entanglement with shifting education priorities. Providing brief summaries of each author’s case study and arguments, it points to the ways in which all five articles address the relationship between space and subjectivity, as well as the issue of constrained agency (versus simple notions of “choice”), in statist urbanization processes.     

Imperialism and Chinese nationalism: Germany in Shantung,By John F. Schrecker

Abstract

Professor Schrecker's book is basically a defense of Qing foreign policy during the 1895-1911 period. He demonstrates a concern of nationalism in late Qing with protecting the legal sovereignty of the Chinese state by showing how turn-of-the-century governors Yuan Shi-kai, Zhou Fu, and Yang Shi-xiang labored to defend the territorial integrity of Shandong [Shantung] province against German imperialism. The book's strength lies in Schrecker's conceptual analysis of Chinese foreign policy and its intellectual roots in the late nineteenth century. He argues cogently and with originality that in their concern for defending “sovereignty,” officials like Yuan Shi-kai combined the militant conservative qing-i school of the 1880s with the internationalist approach after 1895 of radical reformers like Kang You-wei. But Schrecker also argues that Qing foreign policy succeeded in stopping German imperialism in Shandong by 1911 and in terms of the empire as a whole that “in the last decade of the dynasty the Chinese government made considerably more progress in its struggle against imperialism than has generally been believed.” (p. 254) In such judgments about the success of late Qing foreign policy, he betrays the bias of what Bulletin readers have come to know as the Harvard school of apologetics for Western and Japanese imperialism. Schrecker deserves credit for drawing attention to the nationalist posture which the late Qing took after 1901 but he goes too far in his defense of the dynasty and the “progress” actually made against Western and Japanese imperialism.     

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.     

What History Cannot Write: Bei Dao and Recent Chinese Poetry

An examination of the dictates and implications of contemporary counter-terrorism in the United States, this article analyzes the rhetorical tropes, historical precursors, and political valences of the “war on terrorism” as they pertain to the nature of sovereignty, the status of law, and the formation of political subjectivity. Building from a consideration of the demonological discourse on terrorism and the history of counterterrorism during the cold war, the article turns to the contingent sovereignty conferred to other states in the Bush administration's NationalSecurity Strategy and as borne out by its recent foreign policy and military actions. It notes a parallel development within domestic politics since September 11, as the administration seeks to consolidate sovereign authority against the other branches of government, evidenced most clearly in contests with the judiciary over the legitimacy of military tribunals and the legal status of “unlawful” and “enemy combatants.” Pursuing its thesis that counterterrorism as promulgated by the Bush administration needs to be registered as an emergent political rationality, the article draws from the thought of Hannah Arendt and Michel Foucault for its concluding analysis of the effects of counterterrorist surveillance and other forms of social regulation on political subjectivity and the enactment of democratic freedom.     

East Timor's Emerging National Security Agenda: Establishing “Real” Independence

Abstract

This article focuses on the steps East Timor has taken to bolster its defense sector following its attainment of independence in 2002. In International Relations, scholars have often argued that the ability to defend territory and population from external threat is an essential component of sovereign statehood. Literature on post-colonial sovereignty, however, suggests that the external sovereignty of “weak” post-colonial states is more likely to be protected through international legal recognition. In recent years, East Timor has sought to develop their defense capacities in line with conventional thinking about security and “real” independence. This influences the foreign relations of East Timor and also has broader implications for understanding security and independence in post-colonial states.     

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.     

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.     

The Japanese Movement to Protest Wartime Sexual Violence: A Survey of Japanese and International Literature

ABSTRACT

This paper contributes a genealogical perspective to the social sciences study of robots in Japan, proposing a widely applicable research on “robot cultures.” The author discusses the corporate and governmental strategies and mechanisms that are shaping a national robot culture through establishing robot “lineages” and a national robot history which can have significant implications for both humans and robots. The paper contributes discussions on monozukuri (manufacturing) and Nihonjinron (theories on “Japaneseness”) to the existing anthropological consideration of robots, by examining links between monozukuri and robots, robot genealogy, popular culture and robots, and different social rituals and sites that help the enculturation of robots. The paper draws attention to the power relations and hegemonies of robot culture which also imply the existence of plurality and diversity that will require further scholarly attention as the robot phenomenon unfolds.     

New letters from Hiroshima

Abstract

Wartime censors, as Phillip Knightley's The First Casualty reminds us, perform a twofold mission: (l) deny vital data to the enemy and (2) conceal from the citizenry potentially perturbing news as to how their leaders are conducting the mayhem at the front. This protective zeal tends to be habit forming and can outlast formal hostilities. Take the case of two historians who tried to pry past the “received wisdom and the received ignorance” about Western military activities in a gory conflict fought on Third World terrain: A tyrant launched a lightning invasion into a neighboring southern country over which he claimed historical sovereignty. A U.S. diplomat earlier had “signaled” the avaricious dictator that the target state lay outside the perimeter of vital U.S. interests. Nonetheless, seventeen U.N. countries—though primarily the United States—charged in to repel the invaders with a ferocious aerial campaign and a massive ground assault. The tyrant, alas, survived this onslaught because several hundred thousand—and eventually several million—highly motivated Chinese troops came to the rescue.     

Translating ecological migration policy: a conjunctural analysis of Tibetan pastoralist resettlement in China

ABSTRACT

This paper analyzes the transmission of China’s Ecological Migration Policy from the central government down to Tibetan villages and townships for implementation. It examines the specific ways through which the policy is translated from Chinese to Tibetan and communicated through various local dialects to concerned pastoralists. In order to achieve the Ecological Migration Policy’s purported objectives of environmental conservation, livelihood improvement, and urbanization, township government officials at the grassroots level mistranslate and miscommunicate policy meanings to villagers to render an otherwise unfeasible, impractical policy implementable on the ground. Tibetan pastoralists actively engage with this resettlement project to fulfill their desires and aspirations for accessing healthcare and educational services in urban areas. However, this pursuit of legibility is induced by the state’s negligence of rural pastoralist life and elimination of alternative educational facilities in rural communities. Both negligence and elimination of educational facilities in rural areas concentrate and increase investments in education and healthcare in urban settlements. These conjunctures ultimately drive Tibetan pastoralists to “choose” their only available option, to resettle in urban townships.     

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 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.     

The Responsibility to Protect in Southeast Asia: Can ASEAN Reconcile Humanitarianism and Sovereignty?

Abstract

This article explores how relevant the “Responsibility to Protect” (RtoP) principle is in Southeast Asia. Southeast Asia is usually thought of as a region that is highly resistant to external “interference” in its domestic affairs and relatively impervious to the influence of externally generated norms. The article explores the potential relevance of RtoP through an analysis of the impact of Cyclone Nargis on Myanmar. Although the military regime in Myanmar was initially resistant to external intervention, pressure from both the United Nations and especially fellow members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) caused the regime to change its behavior. The authors argue that this marks an important shift in intra-ASEAN relations and suggests that even in Southeast Asia where sovereignty is still jealously guarded, external norms and ideas can have a decisive impact in propitious circumstances.     

China's Strategy in the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands Dispute: Issue Linkage and Coercive Diplomacy

Abstract

For almost four decades, China has disputed Japan's sovereignty of several small rocky islands in the East China Sea. Despite a June 2008 joint gas development agreement, China continues to claim sovereignty and the dispute is nowhere close to being resolved. This study proposes that China benefits from the endurance of the dispute because it can use territorial dispute threats to compel Japan to change its behavior or policy on other disputed issues. The results show that China gained concessions on other issues by using the territorial dispute as bargaining leverage in most of the 26 threats made between 1978 and 2008.     

Providers Not Protectors: Institutionalizing Responsible Sovereignty in Southeast Asia

Abstract

Despite their declaratory support for the United Nations' adoption of the “responsibility to protect” (R2P) principle, Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) governments nonetheless reject the UN proposition that military intervention can and should be employed for implementing the R2P. However, this reluctance has not precluded the development of an ethic of responsible sovereignty in Southeast Asia. But rather than responsibility as protection as assumed by the R2P, ASEAN countries arguably define responsibility in terms of provision for the well-being of their populaces. The development of such an ethic in Southeast Asia has been uneven as evidenced by the Myanmar government's initial reluctance to receive foreign humanitarian assistance following Cyclone Nargis in 2008. That said, as the contemporary policy debate and regional institutional developments in Southeast Asia together attest, an ethic of responsible provision is emerging among ASEAN states.     

The 1988 Nanjing incident: Notes on race and politics in contemporary China

Abstract

On the evening of 24 December 1988 Chinese and African students scuffled at the gates of a Nanjing university. The next night thousands of angry Chinese university students poured down Nanjing's main street toward the heart of the city. Although they would later chant slogans demanding democracy and calling for human rights, on this night they shouted only dadao heigui (down with niggers) and heigui gunhuiqu (niggers get the hell out) as well as other epithets. This “extraordinary combination” of democratic and racist slogans in late 1988 puzzled outside observers of China. This article argues that neither the existence of racism among educated Chinese nor the struggle for democracy alone are enough to explain the intensity of the original clash and its aftermath. Arguments that the incident simply signified an ugly outburst of racism or that students merely used the initial incident as a pretext for pushing for democracy lack sufficient explanatory power. In fact, it is precisely this “extraordinary” pairing of slogans that may reveal something about society, politics, and the educated elite in contemporary China.     

Between Interest and Responsibility: Assessing China's Foreign Policy and Burgeoning Global Role

Abstract

This article is situated within the contemporary debates about the nature and purpose of China's growing power. It uses the concepts of “national interest” and “international responsibility” as a framework of analysis for Chinese foreign policy, and develops a three-dimensional typology to conceptualize their relationship (antagonistic; instrumental; mutually constitutive). This article adopts two main arguments. First, a stronger China is one gravitating toward greater notions of international responsibility, albeit instrumentally. Second, observable trends in China's evolving worldview indicate, however, that it is conceiving its national interests more broadly, embracing further socialization and greater normative commitments to international society. One may therefore view China's burgeoning global role as a great power with a degree of “cautious optimism.”     

Review essay: Western Marxists in flux over Chinese Marxism

Abstract

Where is Marxism going in China? Not far, according to Chinese Marxism in Flux (1978-84). A prominent claim throughout this collection of essays is that Marxism has been used as an ideological club rather than a liberating theory and that this misuse of Marxism can be traced to metatheoretical mistakes. The result, the authors seem to claim, is that revolutionary change has been restricted to economic reforms. There is “constant stress on the reality of Marxist [and sometimes Althusserian] categories” (p. 9), and “some [most?] contributors … are quite sympathetic to aspects of the ‘left’ thinking of previous years” (p. 2).     

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.