Re-gendering Chinese History: Zhao Mei’s Emperor Wu Zetian

Historians who share the written Chinese language as a carrier of cultural signification have negotiated the image of female emperor Wu Zetian with the signs of the times designated by the needs of the present. The female writer Zhao Mei's new biography Woman: Wu Zetian deconstructs the historical and cultural representation of Wu Zetian as the 'bad unwoman'; links a woman's private, and subjective experiences with her public and political activities; and demonstrates that how the former influences the latter. This paper examines how the participation of contemporary biographers in knowledge production constructs, legitimises and maintains the image of Wu Zetian as a woman and a ruler. It argues that Zhao Mei's biography of Wu Zetian manages to confront the established dominance of male hierarchy, questions the 'stigmatised identity' of this historical character as being stable and universal and, consequently re-genders an important chapter in Chinese history.     

Europeans of the Peruvian Andes: A Family History, 1860s–1940s

Liberal elites in nineteenth-century Peru were eager to attract European immigrants to help modernise their country. The majority arrived independently bringing commercial skills, while a minority, contracted as colonists, settled in the tropical lowlands. This article focuses on two European communities established in the central Andean region, where immigrants from northern Italy excelled as merchants and families from the Austrian Tyrol became smallholders. Through a reconstruction of one family's history, which draws on personal letters and a photograph, the article explores the experiences, character and socio-economic transformation of these communities and the significance given to European-ness and whiteness.     

Anxiety and Diminished Hope: The Potential Impact of Trump’s Presidency on Security in the Pacific Islands Region

Abstract

The election of Donald Trump as the next president of the US has caused much international consternation and anxiety. Reactions have been based on distrust and rejection of Trump’s political ideology, behavioural disposition and unpredictable policy positions. His campaign speeches were filled with provocative utterances which were racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-environment and self-centred. This article examines some possible impacts of Trump’s presidency on the Pacific island countries (PICs). The first issue refers to how Trump’s proposed isolationist and militarisation policies may affect regional geopolitics. The two policies tend to contradict each other because while isolationism means pulling back on US economic and strategic presence in the Pacific, a reversal of the pivot to Asia-Pacific policy, militarisation implies greater strategic reach, regionally and globally. What does this seemingly contradictory approach mean for the PICs? Second, the article looks at the impact of Trump’s climate change denial stance and the responses by PICs, given the fact that climate change is the single most significant foreign policy and development initiative of the PICs since their independence. The third issue deals with the potential impact of Trump’s restrictive migration policies on remittance flow to the PICs and how these affect the small island economies and well-being.     

Identifying intentions: Latvian policy-makers’ perceptions of Russia’s intentions

There is much disagreement on the specific aspects of behavior that are the most useful for estimating intentions of potential adversaries. One view is that military capabilities are the most useful. Alternative views consider that an adversary’s domestic politics, or symbolic-normative aspects of its behavior, contain valuable information for assessing its intentions. This article tests these three competing views on Latvia as a case study, based on in-depth interviews with 10 high-ranking decision-makers. The article concludes that although the interviewees regarded information on the potential adversary’s military capabilities to be crucial for inferring its intentions, other indicators were also regarded as important.     

Allegories of Venice: Singapore’s Vague Concept of a Global City

This paper argues that although the state elites of Singapore use “Venice” as an image to legitimate the People’s Action Party’s continuous rule and unpopular immigration policies, the image has both empowered and constrained the state. To the state, Venice serves as a keyword that conjures up dynamism, progress, and continuity; to its critics, however, Venice signals the state’s willingness to focus on the intangible elements of nationhood, namely culture and the arts. These critics use the ambiguities of the Venice rhetoric to legitimate their own appeals for change, especially after discovering that the “shared vision” of Venice is mainly in economic terms. By so doing, detractors of the state contest the centrality of economics in the making of modern—and future—Singapore, rendering the use of “Venice” as an image to promote the concept of a Global City problematic.     

North Korea’s foreign relations: Diplomacy of promotive adaptation

Dramatic changes in East Europe and the Soviet Union resulted in North Korea’s doubling its effort to shield and defend itself from disturbances emanating from the outside. Yet, President Kim Il Sung of North Korea has also opted for new diplomatic moves of realignment in existing ties with China and the Soviet Union and is also seeking new rleations with Japan and the United States. North Korea’s diplomatic adaptation in 1990–91, such as its balancing diplomatic acts vis-à-vis the major allies and adversaries, is examined, and so is the North Korean dilemma of reconciling national interests and ideology. While Pyongyang’s nonaligned nations diplomacy is temporarily stalled, its Un diplomacy is likely to be activated as a result of the simultaneous entry into the United Nations with South Korea in 1991.     

Leadership Traits and Ghana’s Foreign Policy: The Case of Jerry Rawlings’ Foreign Economic Policy of the 1980s

This article examines Ghana’s foreign policy-making with reference to internal and external determinants (structural/systemic). Besides these determinants, political actors (primarily, presidents/heads of state) have shaped the country’s foreign policy outcomes, but this field of enquiry (i.e. the individual-level analysis) has not, received much attention in the literature. To enhance the understanding of leadership and personality traits in foreign policy-making, this study draws on the theory of Leadership Trait Analysis to examine Jerry John Rawlings and Ghana’s foreign economic policy in the early 1980s. It argues that the leadership traits of Rawlings to some extent shaped Ghana’s foreign economic policy decisions in the early 1980s.