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Asia Pacific Perspectives Vol. 19 No. 1, 2025, University Of San Francisco

Asia Pacific Perspectives

Articles

Think Pieces

Photo Essay

Book Reviews

Closing The Revolution: The Criticize Water Margin Campaign And The Politics Of Surrender In Mao’S China, Yaowen Dong

Asia Pacific Perspectives

The mid 1970s witnessed a massive Maoist campaign to attack the late imperial vernacular fiction Water Margin, which had been previously favored by the Chinese Communist Party because of its elements of rebellion and egalitarianism. The paper examines the Criticize Water Margin Campaign in 1975 and 1976 that interpreted the fiction as class-reconciliation and surrender. I argue that the dramatic shift of the narratives surrounding Water Margin manifested the deeply embedded paradox between rebellion and normalization in the communist revolutionary project. Such paradox of revolution is not only the product of the infringement of the coming neoliberal world order, …

Think Piece: Urban Echoes: How The New Historiography On Cities Is Reframing Our Understanding Of Mao’S China, Taoyu Yang

Asia Pacific Perspectives

Despite the conventional portrayal of the Chinese revolution as a predominantly peasant-oriented movement, cities emerged as critical arenas for the Chinese Communist Party’s project of modernization and class restructuring during Maoist period (1949–1976). Over the past decade, scholarly attention has increasingly turned to the urban dimensions of the early years of the People’s Republic. This think piece addresses how recent scholarship on cities offers new analytical insights into our understanding of Maoist China by focusing on six recently published monographs. Themes to be discussed in this essay include the contested and evolving notion of socialist modernity, the transformative effects of …

Book Review: William Nelson Lovatt In Late Qing China: War, Maritime Customs, And Treaty Ports, 1860-1904, By Wayne Patterson, Wen-Hsin Yeh

Asia Pacific Perspectives

No abstract provided.

Chinese Firms In The Belt And Road Initiative: A Cross-Sectoral Study Of Bri Activities In Kenya, Yabo Wu

Asia Pacific Perspectives

The long-time development of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has sparked debates between scholars who emphasize a state-led approach and those who see decentralized project operations initiated by profit motives. This study bridges this divide by examining the practices of Chinese firms within the BRI, shedding light on state-business relations. Focusing on Kenya, a pivotal maritime BRI location, it explores Chinese state-firm relational dynamics in infrastructure, trade, and manufacturing BRI projects. The findings reveal that Chinese firms in Kenya, private or state-owned, play a partial strategic role. The Chinese state selects activities crucial for establishing a mutually beneficial narrative …

Asia Pacific Perspectives Vol. 18 No 1. 2023, University Of San Francisco

Asia Pacific Perspectives

Contents:

Articles

Urban Youth on the Margins: Inequality in China’s Sent Down Youth Movement by Sanjiao Tang

Chinese Firms in the Belt and Road Initiative: A Cross-Sectoral Study of BRI Activities in Kenya by Yabo Wu

Book Review

W. Puck Brecher. Animal Care in Japanese Tradition: A Short History by James Stone Lunde

Asia Pacific Perspectives Vol. 17 No. 1, 2021, University Of San Francisco

Asia Pacific Perspectives

Contents:

Editor's Introduction by Melissa S. Dale

We are pleased to announce the publication of the latest issue of Asia Pacific Perspectives (vol. 17, no. 1). This issue showcases the resilience and creativity of scholars doing research and writing about the Asia Pacific during the COVID-19 pandemic.

These scholars, like others in the humanities and social sciences, have not only found ways to continue their scholarship during these trying times but to even re-image how to go about doing research moving forward.

From Sanitation to Soybeans: Kitchen Hygiene and Nutritional Nationalism in Republican China, 1911-1945 by Sarah Xia Yu

This …

From Sanitation To Soybeans: Kitchen Hygiene And Nutritional Nationalism In Republican China, 1911–1945, Sarah Xia Yu

Asia Pacific Perspectives

This article investigates evolving expectations for Chinese individuals to clean, cook, eat, and nourish in their private kitchens, and how certain diseases became urgent touchstones for the change in public health priorities. Reformists promoted personal responsibility and popular interest in kitchen and dietary hygiene, which increased as Chinese audiences became exposed to globally- circulating ideas of sanitation and nutrition in individual homes. Furthermore, this occurred in tandem with increased institutionalized government developments for improved infrastructure. This article also highlights Chinese participation in the transnational dietary science movement of the early twentieth century, as reformists developed methods for beriberi and tuberculosis …

Book Review: Global Medicine In China: A Diasporic History, Carlos B. Broggi

Asia Pacific Perspectives

No abstract provided.

Is It Possible To Think Of A “Chinese Pacific” In The Making? Decolonizing Anthropology In The Asia-Pacific Region, Rodolfo Maggio

Asia Pacific Perspectives

The travel restrictions implemented to limit the spread of the COVID19 pandemic prevent fieldworkers from collecting ethnographic data in the Pacific. The possibility of collecting first-hand data about indigenous perspectives on the recent growth of the Chinese presence and influence is therefore limited too. Despite the critical need for this kind of data, the situation provides an opportunity for a concerted reflection on the conceptual tools scholars deploy to study China in the Pacific. A decolonial methodology seems necessary to prevent the superimposition of preconceived ideas upon indigenous views that, at the moment, can only be accessed in journalistic and …

Asia Pacific Perspectives Vol. 16 No. 1, Fall/Winter 2018-2019, University Of San Francisco

Asia Pacific Perspectives

Contents:

Editor's Introduction by Melissa S. Dale

Within this issue, we share three examples of the latest research on cultures of dress, clothing, fashion and the formation of identity in the Asia Pacific region. These articles reveal the innovative work that scholars are currently pursuing in this area of research, ranging from the history of the tattooing in Japan, to fashion exchange between China and Mozambique, to the phenomena known as cosplay.

Fashioning Tattooed Bodies: An Exploration of Japan's Tattoo Stigma by John M. Skutlin

This article uses a cultural anthropological approach to examine tattooing stigma in contemporary Japan, particularly …

Asia Pacific Perspectives Vol. 15 No. 2, Spring/Summer 2018, University Of San Francisco

Asia Pacific Perspectives

Contents:

Editor's Introduction by Melissa S. Dale

The editor reflects on this issue's new articles, which focus on climate change as it is being experienced across Asia, and the different local responses it has provoked. From China to India to Southeast Asia, the relationship of nature to each local worldview shapes how communities view climate change, its effects, and their responses to it.

Fengshui Forests as A Socio-natural Reservoir in the Face of Climate Change and Environmental Transformation by Christopher R. Coggins and Jesse Minor

Chinese lineage villages are social-ecological systems (SESs) designed according to principles of fengshui (“wind-water”). Fengshui …

Asia Pacific Perspectives Vol. 15 No. 1, Fall 2017, University Of San Francisco

Asia Pacific Perspectives

Contents:

Editor's Introduction by Melissa Dale

The editor reflects on this issue's new articles, which focus on historical and contemporary expressions of masculinity in China, Japan, Korea, and India.

Asian Masculinity Studies in the West: From Minority Status to Soft Power by Kam Louie

Material focusing on Asian men and sexualities which had in the past resisted analysis, has sparked original and innovative modes of analysis that have become commonplace. In this exciting period, Asian masculinity studies have attracted some adventurous minds and new territories are being explored every day. While carving out an interdisciplinary field for itself, Asian masculinity …