Sovereignty,Human Rights,and Responsibility: Changes in China’s Response to International Humanitarian Crises

The question of whether human rights are above sovereignty has dominated China’s human rights discourse. Relying on a sovereignty-human rights spectrum, this article reviews China’s behaviors, particularly its participation in the UN Security Council, in managing the three major international humanitarian crises in the post-Cold War era—Rwanda, Kosovo, and Darfur, and finds that there have been impressive changes in China’s response to the crises. Yet, a content analysis of China’s official discourse on human rights finds that China’s attitudes towards sovereignty and human rights have not changed much. Drawing on constructivist international relations theory, this article attempts to explain the paradox. It is argued that the international discourse on the “responsibility to protect” has brought about changes in international norms regarding violations of human rights and humanitarian law, and that, having undergone in recent years an identity change from a defensive power of bitterness and insecurity to a rising power aspiring to take more responsibility, China is more concerned about its national image and more receptive to international norms, which has led to the changes in its response to international humanitarian crises.     

Chinese Intellectual Discourse on Democracy

Intellectual discourse on democracy has made important impacts on China’s transformation and the Chinese pursuit of democracy. There has been an intense divergence in understanding and interpretation of democracy among the Chinese scholars. In spite of different point of views among scholars in China, there is a growing consensus among them that political reform is the right answer to China’s today’s problems and democracy is a good thing for China. This paper analyzes the on-gong heated debates on democracy. It reviews the main structure, characteristics, and implications of the debates on democracy among three major schools of thought, namely: democracy with Chinese characteristics, liberalism, and New-Leftism.     

Community Building,Civil Society and Societal Service Production in China

This article examines the Chinese scholarly discourse about promoting civil society, constructing urban and rural communities, and transferring social service provision to society. It finds that this discourse treats two separate models as if they were one. The civil society model stresses freedom to organize for advancing the aims that participants share. The community building model emphasizes community governance and empowerment. Together, these two models expect both the state and society to strengthen their presence in the same communal space. These two models have theoretical inconsistencies, but these inconsistencies disappear if civil society is understood in the very narrow terms of the ‘small government, big society' model in which the state wants to reduce its own economic burdens in social service production. It is thus likely that in China civil society either remains secondary to the state-initiated channels of social and political participation in communities, or takes place mainly on the regional or national scope in which civil society organizations no longer compete with communal ones.     

Microeconomic Reform and National Competition Policy: Misconceptions and Problems

Microeconomic reform and the so-called National Competition Policy (NCP) have entered political discourse but often with little discussion of their specific meaning. The terminology tends to be emotionally and intuitively appealing. It implies that any microeconomic reform per se is necessarily 'good' for the achievement of economic efficiency. Moreover, misconceptions about the meaning of economic efficiency frequently result in the belief that a higher level of competition is always 'good' for the achievement of that objective.
While there are many features in the new competition policy which deserve the wide acceptance and support it has been given, there are also aspects of it which do not stand up to closer scrutiny. It is those aspects, including the problems which will arise when ambitious but vague principles are put into practice, which will receive attention in this article.     

China's Recovery: Why the Writing Was Always on the Wall

China has been a major power for far longer than is typically acknowledged in the West. This paper seeks to redress established discourse of China as a 'rising' power which now enjoys common usage within Western policy-making, academic and popular circles, particularly within the United States; China can more accurately be conceived of as a 'recovering power'. A tendency by successive Washington administrations to view the world in realist terms has forced the label of 'rising' power onto China along with the negative connotations that inevitably follow. We should acknowledge the folly in utilising a theoretical approach largely devoid of any appreciation for the social and human dimensions of international relations as well as the importance of social discourse in the field. Finally, policy-makers in Washington must reconsider their realist stance and, with a fuller appreciation of world history, recognise that American hegemony was always destined to be short-lived.     

An Afrocentric critique of China's security concerns in Africa: The cases of Mali and South Sudan

China's security concerns in Africa has recently become a subject of much academic debate. Most of the academic studies on this subject have wrongly assumed a continental standpoint, which does not take into contemplation the distinctive national captivates of China toward each distinctive African State. Such analytic discourse analysis were also heavily subjected to North [ern] angled perspectives as expressed in either liberal or realist contextual lens, views, and critics. Despite this, the Scholarly discourse on the security concerns of China towards Mali and South Sudan have not been proportionately apprehended. Based on the alternative Afrocentric perspective, this article seeks to employ Mali and South Sudan as test cases to critique the Security Concerns of China toward Mali and South Sudan. The central argument of this article is that, China's Security Concerns towards Mali and South Sudan can best be understood when located within the context of mineral resources complex. Methodologically, this article is based on document review and interdisciplinary discourse analysis in their comprehensive form.     

How to Build a ‘Beautiful China’ in the Anthropocene. The Political Discourse and the Intellectual Debate on Ecological Civilization

The aim of this article is to contribute to the debate on global prosperity in the post-GDP world, with specific attention given to the political discourse and intellectual debate on ecological civilization in China. I will first assess the national and international implications of assuming that China as a whole is a ‘locality’. I will then focus specifically on one of the most significant political and intellectual debates in Chinese studies today, namely the social and environmental challenges linked to China’s political and socio-economic development. In this light, I will engage with the debate on the Anthropocene - the era during which humans have become an earth-altering force – and its interrelationship with the discourse on ecological civilization. In China, the term ‘ecological civilization’ appeared in the 1980s in the academic domain and was then appropriated by political discourse. This article proves that the concept of eco-civilization, in a similar way to the Anthropocene, has a significant discursive power: it allows for a shift from the binary political economy discourses of ‘growth’ versus ‘development’, and ‘socialism’ versus ‘capitalism’, to the inquiry of eco-socially sustainable prosperity. The final aim of this article is both to offer a more nuanced analysis of the relationship between the political discourse and academic debate, and to substantiate the rhetoric trope of ‘Advancing Ecological Civilization and Building a Beautiful China’.     

The Dilemmas of China’s Political Science in the Context of the Rise of China

The rise of China has changed the global balance of power, which could also have an impact on the international development of political science scholarship. Very little attention, however, has been paid to the impact of China’s rise on the development of political science within China. This article examines how the rise of China has posed serious challenges to political studies in China. It addresses critical issues concerning the contemporary features and strategic direction of the discipline. It first analyzes three different meanings of what constitutes China’s political studies and discusses three different intellectual production models. It then highlights the dilemmas that political science faces in China, and exposes problems of and obstacles to its development, such as an unwarranted sense of pride, the bureaucratization of the scholarly community, and, critically, the absence of democracy and academic freedom. The paper examines and engages several ongoing debates on China’s political studies. In responding to the debate over whether it is desirable for Chinese political studies to move towards scientification, this paper presents four arguments for a balance between science and the humanities and outlines four strategies for achieving this balance. It also examines the debate on the localization of Chinese political studies and the doctrine of China’s uniqueness; and points out that the rise of China requires Chinese political studies to be cosmopolitan, global and universal, but the current regime is interested in reproducing the discourse of China’s uniqueness to maintain its political legitimacy.     

A Discourse Called China and the PRC’s Foreign Policy and Diplomacy

On the basis of the premise that China, besides being a powerful civilization and state, is also a powerful discourse, this essay will set forth, as a preliminary analytical step, a plausible definition of the ‘Chinese mind’ by describing certain essential characteristics that have been forged in China’s classical culture and thought. When placed in the more creative sphere of discourse construction, these essential characteristics become ideological compounds of the here theorized ‘discourse called China’, whose impact is weighed up as the focal analytical point in the discursive space of the PRC’s foreign policy and diplomacy.     

Cultivating self-health subjects: Yangsheng and biocitizenship in urban China

China's transformation from state-run socialism to market economy has resulted in the progressive privatization of a number of key areas, including public health. At the same time, research suggests that the privatization of public service has given accelerated the formation of self-governing subjects who will enrich and strengthen Chinese authoritarian rule. This is most vividly demonstrated in the tendency of Chinese consumers to engage in the practice of self-health, an integral dimension of the wide-spread yangsheng (life-nurturing) practice at the grassroots level. Engaging with the concept of biocitizenship, and combining critical analysis of media with ethnographic fieldwork, this paper examines a nationwide process of health literacy education through popular media and the ways in which this process shapes yangsheng as both discourse and practice. It also identifies a range of ethical positions adopted by individual citizens in response to yangsheng as a discourse, practice and industry. The discussion reveals that biological citizenship has indeed become a new and integral dimension of China's citizenship project in the twenty-first century. We learn that while there is indeed an unambiguously top-down process of making biocitizens, a certain level of biological citizenship ‘from below’ is also present, albeit with distinct Chinese characteristics.     

Weibo, Framing, and Media Practices in China

This study uses frames analysis to investigate online discourses and processes of political deliberation on China’s weibo (microblog) service. It offers a comparative analysis of competing discourses surrounding the case of Wang Yue, a toddler who was ran over by two motor vehicles in Foshan, following which 18 people passed by and ignored her plight. The study aims to understand how weibo facilitate its users to express their differences and deliberate disagreements with each other. The study found that Internet users are rational in the sense that they do not simply lean towards a dichotomised choice of ‘pro-’ or ‘anti-’ official discourse, but they are able to negotiate their moral choices by considering a wide range of social and political factors in such an emotional and morally controversial incident.     

Acting one way and talking another: China's coercive economic diplomacy in East Asia and beyond

Over the last two decades, China has experienced one of the most dramatic and sustained periods of economic growth in world history. China's use of economic statecraft provides an important venue in which to examine the role of unacknowledged ‘coercive diplomacy’ within the context of China's ‘peaceful rise discourse.’ In contrast to Western countries, which have overtly used sanctions and other forms of economic coercion, China has publicly denied any such policies while at the same time quietly pursuing them. China's denial of using coercive economic statecraft has muted the reactions of neighboring publics and government, but it cannot entirely forestall them. Without seriously undermining China's ‘peaceful-rising’ image, a more explicit statement from Beijing regarding its coercive economic measure could provide deterrence and assurance to China's neighbors in resolving the disputes. This article first surveys existing literature on economic statecraft focusing on the coercive aspects of such strategies. Second, it presents an in-depth case study on how China uses economic leverages over its neighbors in East Asia: North Korea, Japan, and the Philippines. Finally, it highlights the limits of China's economic statecraft within the constraints of China's ‘peaceful rise’ discourse. It concludes with implications for Asian politics and beyond.     

Does a public sphere exist in the European Union? An analysis of the content of the debate on the Haider case

Abstract.  This article sets out how the public sphere can be studied through an analysis of the content of a specific debate. A public discourse can be said to pertain to a European Union-wide public sphere where the discourse within the EU is significantly different from that developed in non-EU countries, where such differences are not nationally defined, and where the debates in individual newspapers (which provide the fora for a public sphere) should be connected on the basis of some underlying factors. These conditions are tested with a quantitative analysis of the newspaper debate in 1999 and 2000 on the sanctions of the EU-14 against Austria. To the extent that the conditions are found, it can be concluded that there exists a European public opinion. The objective of studying this specific case is to demonstrate that, as far as an EU issue is concerned, there are already signs of an EU transnational political community.     

Chinese isms: the modernization of ideological discourse in China

ABSTRACT

The many words in ‘-ism’ in Western languages, from ‘anarchism’ to ‘Zenonism,’ are the linguistic manifestation of a significant European conceptual innovation in scholarly and ideological discourse. Briefly put, there is an intense reductionism in these concepts that underlies their effective rhetorical deployment in various forms of ideological and expository discourse. While isms originated in Europe, they were eventually appropriated by speakers of other languages and became a significant factor and indicator of change in modern society on a global scale. Concepts such as ‘feminism,’ ‘socialism’ and ‘nationalism’ were instrumental in transforming history in the Far East, and so this article explores the appropriation of isms as zhǔyì 主義 in Chinese. The article focuses on how ‘ismatic reasoning’ came to dominate Chinese intellectual and political discourse in the 20th century, zooming in on the case of political ideals for China in the modern world. The historical contingency and change of particular isms, as well as local conceptual innovations, are highlighted in the article.     

Re-branding without re-developing: constraints of Hong Kong's ‘Asia's World City’ brand (1997–2007)

Abstract

Interest among academics towards Hong Kong's global status has gradually waned since 1997. However, identifying Hong Kong's position on the international platform is essential if the Special Administrative Region's competitiveness is to be distinguished from that of regional rivals. The positioning challenge not only results from the sovereignty retrocession, but also from the rapid pace of globalization and the intensified competition from major cities in the Greater China Region. Instead of focusing on the much-researched topic of the direct competition between Hong Kong and Shanghai or Singapore, an exploration of Hong Kong's hitherto little-researched re-branding experience not only throws light on Hong Kong Special Administrative Region's policy orientation, but is also valuable in understanding how other cities in the region conducted similar exercises. This article reviews the overall evolution of the ‘Asia's World City’ (AWC) discourse as promoted by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region from 1997 to 2007. It starts by reviewing the international identity of post-colonial Hong Kong as background to the discourse, in order to reconstruct various theoretical assumptions that led to the re-branding exercise. The second section examines the purpose and evolution of the AWC campaign, and identifies the problems within the discourse. The concluding section focuses on the unrealized theoretical assumptions and other administrative and ideological constraints that the HKSARG faced in the exercise as a means to explaining the overall limited achievements of the campaign and proposes possible ways to remedy the shortcomings.     

Discourse Ethics and the Normative Justification of Tolerance

Abstract

The following paper considers the extent to which discourse ethics can adequately respond to Habermas' own call for normative justification for the expectation of tolerance. It concludes that discourse ethics is able to lend its services to the flagging fortunes of the idea of toleration, not by seeking to underscore this idea with rationally compelling argumentation, but by offering insights into the possibilities opened up to a life which accepts this principle.     

No space for citizens? Conceptualisations of citizenship in a functional region

This article aims to discuss whether there is such a thing as citizenship performed at the level of the sub-state region and, if so, how this can be studied. It is suggested that aspects of citizenship should be studied not only in the context of sub-state administrative units, but also in the context of more loosely interconnected functional economic regions. The main argument for this is that, although there is no ‘contract’ between the polity and the citizen in these functional regions, they are often highly politicized spaces, governed by coalitions of public and private actors whose actions can be of considerable importance for those inhabiting them. It is also suggested that, in the absence of formal rights and institutionalized relations between citizens and polity, we need to explore how ‘citizens’ and ‘citizenship’ are conceptualized by the polity in these regions more broadly. The article focuses (a) on the conditions for citizenship in the functional region and (b) on those discourses of citizenship that emerge under the conditions identified. A tentative conclusion is that, in the absence of formal citizenship rights connected to the functional space, a discourse about citizens and citizenship has emerged, which is focuses solely on citizens' capacity to contribute to economic growth.     

China in the era of globalization: the emergence of the discourse on economic security

Abstract

This article looks at the Chinese debate on economic security during the period between 1997 and 2004. The contemporary concept of economic security (jingji anquan, 经济安全) was first raised in the Chinese academic literature in 1997, partly as a reaction to the Asian financial crisis and partly due to the increasing role China began to play in globalization, the effects of which it increasingly felt as its economy became more integrated with that of the world. This article examines the emergence of the discourse on economic security within Chinese academic circles, and identifies the development of this concept in China between 1997 and 2004 prior to the ascendancy of the ‘fourth-generation’ leadership.     

Insurgent informality: the struggle over space production between the Israeli state and its Palestinian Bedouin communities

This article addresses the political and spatial agenda of the people of informalities. It conceptualizes insurgent informality as a discursive social reality, which is based on the struggle between the state hegemonic discourse regarding informal spaces and modes of space production and the countering-hegemonic discourse of communities. Based on empirical case, this paper interrogates the discourses of Israel and the its Arab communities regarding informal spaces. The analysis suggests that the state hegemonic discourse is articulated through three interrelated logics of difference, threat and spatiality. The countering discourse challenges the hegemonic discourse through its logic of justice, recognition, and protest.     

意识形态安全视域下社会思潮的新发展态势及其批判

在新中国70多年的社会发展变革中,多样化社会思潮不断涌现,并与马克思主义意识形态产生了激烈的论争,呈现出新的发展态势:在理论演进上,从注重抽象的学术争辩转向注重现实政治诉求;在现实关切上,从宏观的社会发展道路转向微观的利益分配;在国际交互态势上,从国外思潮不断向国内思潮转化;在话语辐散上,从知识分子话语扩展到大众话语;在传播方式上,从传统媒体时代的单向度传播转向全媒体时代的多向度传播。新时代马克思主义意识形态建设要科学把握社会思潮新的发展态势,切实增强马克思主义意识形态对当代中国多样化社会思潮的凝聚力与引领力,从而保障国家意识形态安全,提升国家治理效能。