Chinese Studies Commons^™

A Quick Q & A With Kim Rathcke Jensen: A Beijing-Based Danish Journalist

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

A variety of events, from the Copenhagen environmental issues summit in 2009 to the controversy sparked by the Empty Chair in Oslo last year, have led to news stories in the American press that involve both China and a Scandinavian country. This led me to wonder what, if anything, was distinctive about the way Scandinavian media cover China. Realizing that there are bound to be important differences among Scandinavian countries in this regard, but needing to start somewhere in getting a feel for this issue, I turned to Kim Rathcke Jensen, a Danish reporter whose wide-ranging China-focused twitter feedhttp://twitter.com/kinablog/ I’ve …

China Beat On Break

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Happy holidays to all our readers and contributors from the China Beat editorial team.

Ode To The Communist Song Revisited

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Back in 2009, as the Chinese Communist Party geared up to mark one major official anniversary (the 60th birthday of the founding of the PRC), China Beat was fortunate enough to be able to run a lively piece of reportage by the versatile writer Lijia Zhang on an unusual museum devoted to a single revolutionary song. Now, as the CCP prepares for another anniversary (the 90th birthday of the organization itself), headlines about the “Red Song” wave (a fad that has been most closely associated with Chongqing but has also been making its mark on other parts of the country) …

The Red Legacy, Alec Ash

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

When I left Beijing after two years studying Mandarin at Peking and Tsinghua Universities, my Chinese friends from those universities threw me a leaving dinner at the Cultural Revolution restaurant, far on the outskirts of Beijing, outside the 5th ring road. While punters ate, drank and sang along with Mao era songs, waitresses dressed as Red Guards performed patriotic dances, clutching prop rifles. “Long live Chairman Mao!,” the diners would shout, tucking into red-braised pork – good thing this wasn’t the Great Leap Forward restaurant, or it would perhaps have been a quarter bowl of rice each. “Death to capitalist …

Hu Jintao’S “Concession” On Human Rights, Alice Miller

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Chinese President and CCP General Secretary Hu Jintao’s remarks on human rights during his joint press conference with President Obama in Washington on 19 January have been widely regarded in foreign media as a grudging concession that broke new ground in Beijing’s position on the issue. Specifically, confronted by a persistent Washington press corps, Hu for the first time acknowledged “the universality of human rights” in international politics and conceded that “a lot still needs to be done in China in terms of human rights.”

Memories Of Hyperdevelopment: Chongqing Trip Report, Jacob Dreyer

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Like any good Shanghai resident, I am more or less terrified by the China that exists outside of metro line 3. However, I had been obsessing for months about the municipality of Chongqing, a radically unusual city even by the standards of contemporary China. When I found that I had a spare weekend, I finally took a trip there to explore. Instead of describing my trip, or offering a journalistic take on the city à la Christina Larson, whose piece in Foreign Policy does that more competently than I could hope to, what follows is a series of meditations on …

Shanghai Spaces And Histories: Thoughts On Reading Qiu Xiaolong’S Years Of Red Dust, Daisy Yan Du

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

In Shanghai Modern, Leo Lee, a prominent specialist in Chinese literary studies, focuses much of his attention on urban space as a marker of modernity in Republican Shanghai (1912-1949). His mappings of the city include places that are located mostly in the concessions, where Western (and later Japanese) influences dominated: the high-rise buildings in the Bund, the department stores located on or near Nanjing Road, and the cafes in the French Concession, as well as dance halls, public parks, race clubs, and cinemas. Lee also touches upon the lanes populated by native Chinese, but his main focus is on …

Asia’S Disappearing Daughters, Jeffrey Wasserstrom

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Last week witnessed the publication of Mara Hvistendahl’s Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men (Public Affairs, 2011), and over the weekend my take on the book appeared online at the recently relaunched Asian Review of Books. That review is reposted here with the kind permission of the ARB, almost exactly as it ran there. Those who are interested in learning more about Hvistendahl’s arguments after reading my essay can, of course, buy the book, but U.S.-based followers of the blog have another option as well: catch one of the public events …

Humiliation And Normalization: A Tale Of Two New China Books, Jeffrey Wasserstrom

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Henry Kissinger and Robert Bickers don’t have much in common. One is a U.S.-based octogenarian; the other a U.K.-based scholar roughly half as old. Only one, Kissinger, has been characterized by Christopher Hitchens (among others) as a perpetrator of war crimes. And only one, ironically Kissinger again, has won a Nobel Peace Prize. Kissinger spent some time as a professor, but then went on to work as a diplomat and business consultant. Bickers, however, while writing about diplomats and entrepreneurs (along with policemen and other kinds of people), has made his career solely within the academy. This list could be …

My Life As An Art Soldier In Mao's China: Art And Politics, Shaomin Li

Management Faculty Publications

The author narrates how in Mao's China his personal experience took unexpected turns when China dramatically transformed politically, economically, and culturally, and how in reacting to these overwhelming changes he evolved from the role of artist to student activist, businessman, political prisoner and academic. The article focuses on the relationship between art and politics in Mao's China and how the two evolved into what the author characterizes as "market communism" in today’s China.

New Media And Old Dilemmas: Online Protest And Cyber Repression In Asia Panel Report, Maura Elizabeth Cunningham

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

As I noted in an article I wrote for the Dissent website earlier this week, one of the major China-related stories of 2011 has been the government’s ever-increasing crackdown on public expression. What started subtly back in January—a slowdown in internet service here and there, more websites (including this one) being blocked—became a full-blown international issue on April 3, when artist and activist Ai Weiwei was detained at the Beijing airport. Ai’s disappearance has sparked a flood of analysis and commentaries: Colin Jones discusses “The Purge of Ai Weiwei” at Dissent, Evan Osnos at the New Yorkerhas written a series …

Factories Without Smoke, Chris Cherry

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

They are China’s most precious economic asset: migrant workers. Each year, millions upon millions untie themselves from the rhythms of rural life to chase down a future in the prestige cities and sudden boomtowns of the eastern and southern coasts. In doing so, they begin a dramatic journey from farmer to worker; one marked by a profound shift from cultivating land they own, to producing goods they don’t. But few will be allowed to transform completely. Oft belittled for their unsophisticated ways, to urbanites they are forever “waidiren” — outside people. Most will be marked by their speech the moment …

We Chinese, M. Scott Brauer

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

“We Chinese” grew out of a curiosity to find out what Chinese people think about their country and their future. Media coverage of the country and its development often raises questions about the direction of the government in Beijing on the world stage. Few reports take into account the feelings of the Chinese people, instead making reference to the country as a monolithic actor without constituent parts. A country’s trajectory through history cannot be mapped without careful consideration of the people. This project aims, in a small way, to develop a portrait of the country by looking at the individual …

Pre-Summit Positioning, Scott Kennedy

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Preparations for Wednesday’s state visit by Hu Jintao have been underway for several months. Most of that time was spent negotiating over what deals would be reached, whether there would be a joint statement, and what food would be served. I’m particularly interested to see: 1) Whether Chinese first lady Liu Yongqing will eat the standard fare put on the table as everyone else. She typically travels with her own chef and food; and 2) Whether the American media will get a good photo of the back of Hu Jintao’s head to determine once and for all if he has …

On The Joys Of Online Book Shopping, Maggie Greene

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

In the fall of 2010, I advanced to candidacy at the University of California, San Diego, and bearing the new title of PhD candidate in modern Chinese history, I set off for that great and time-honored pilgrimage to the People’s Republic of China to start researching my dissertation. I’ve been here four months, and while the process of researching Chinese opera (particularly kun opera and ghost plays) in the PRC has not been as smooth as I would have hoped, there is one thing that’s been going swimmingly: book shopping. More precisely, shopping online for books related to my dissertation.

Reading Round-Up, 2/20/11

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

• If you’re looking for a few China book recommendations, check out these two recent interviews at The Browser’s “Five Books” feature: the New Yorker’s Evan Osnos suggests five books that first-time visitors to China should read before they go, and Victor Shih of Northwestern University shares his favorite titles dealing with the Chinese economy.

Book Review: Embattled Glory

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Will virulent nationalism make China a threat to the international order? This is the question that Neil J. Diamant sets out to address in Embattled Glory. A number of academics as well as the mass media have argued that after 1989 the Chinese Communist Party purposely fostered a wide-spread and strongly-felt popular nationalism, and that this sense of nationalism pushes Chinese foreign policy toward more hard-line positions that could lead to diplomatic or even military conflict between China, its neighbors, and even the United States. Diamant points specifically to Peter Gries’ China’s New Nationalism: Pride, Politics and Diplomacy as an …

Bay Area Readers: See Datong: The Great Society

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Our readers in the Bay Area who enjoyed learning about the new Kang Youwei docu-drama Datong: The Great Society earlier this week have an upcoming opportunity to see the movie, which will be screened at UC Berkeley on December 13. Filmmaker Evans Chan will be on hand for a Q&A after the film.

China’S Empty Apartments, Michael Gsovski

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Southeast of Kunming, a new city has risen from the earth, so new that it is literally called the “Chenggong New Area.” Giant complexes of towering, modern apartment buildings line the wide, recently built streets, broken every few kilometers by parks as large and as well designed as any in Kunming proper. Every block of apartment buildings has a police substation, and some have functioning schools. Along the recently constructed highways linking the new city to the old, it seems as if farmland has been transformed into a high-rise commuter suburb like those on the outskirts of Hong Kong and …

Thoughts On River Elegy, June 1988-June 2011, David Moser

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

I remember watching the legendary six-part CCTV miniseries River Elegy in my dorm room at Peking University in June of 1988—the last June in the Chinese historical calendar that would not have its 4th day permanently stained red. At the time I could not understand much of the stentorian voice-over (I was only a couple of years into my lifelong struggle with Chinese), but during the week the show was broadcast it became clear that the documentary had hit academic circles like an atomic bomb. The series’ content—a sweeping, brutally painful critique of the deep structure of Chinese culture—was the …

Beijing Subway’S “Great Leap Forward” Provokes Resistance, Jared Hall

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

An elderly couple camped outside as most of the city took shelter from the winter chill. They were doused in gasoline, flanked by a box of matches and a coffin. A small crowd looked on solemnly as the pair read posters recounting their story. These were Wang Shibo’s grandparents, whose store on the southern end of the popular Nanluoguxiang (南􀀀鼓巷) shopping street had been slated for demolition to make way for a new station along Beijing Subway’s newly-extended Line Eight.

Q&A: Yi-Li Wu, Author Of Reproducing Women, Maura Elizabeth Cunningham

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

MEC: Your book examines “medicine for women” (􀀀科 fuke) in Qing China. How did the practice of fuke then differ from present-day obstetrics and gynecology? What has changed in the Chinese understanding of women’s medicine?

China Beat On Break

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

We’re going to put China Beat on hiatus from now until early July so I can get settled in Shanghai (where I’ll be based for the next couple of months) and all of our consulting editors and contributors can enjoy some summer vacation.

Ai Weiwei At The Venice Biennale, Jon Wiener

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

At the world’s biggest art event this summer, the Venice Biennale, the world’s most famous imprisoned artist, Ai Weiwei, was not exactly neglected—but his case received virtually no official acknowledgment.

Q&A: Robert Bickers, Author Of The Scramble For China, Jeffrey Wasserstrom

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Several months ago, I was lucky enough to get my hands on an advance copy of The Scramble for China: Foreign Devils in the Qing Empire, 1832-1914, Robert Bickers’ fascinating new book. Published in the United Kingdom and most other parts of the world in February, this work will be released in the United States later this month. In anticipation, I caught up with Robert (an old friend and sometime co-author of mine, as well as a past contributor to China Beat) and asked him some questions about the book. A stylishly written and carefully researched work, it contains everything …

The Sounds Of Zhèngmíng: Setting Names Straight In Early Chinese Texts, Jane Geaney

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

In early Chinese texts, straightness often indicates correctness, hence many things are said to be zhèng 正.¹ But among them, only zhèngmíng 正名 emerged as a rhetorical slogan promising the production of order and elimination of human confusion and fakeness.² In scholarship on Chinese ethics, the slogan is usually understood as working toward these goals by making behavior accord with names or by making “names” (norms or social roles) accord with behavior. By contrast, on the assumption that uses of the term “míng” (name/title/fame) involved what something is called or what is …

Confucianism And The Legalism: A Model Of The National Strategy Of Governance In Ancient China, Haiwen Zhou

Economics Faculty Publications

The Confucian school emphasizes family value, moral persuasions, and personal relations. Under Confucianism, there is a free-rider issue in the provision of efforts. Since national officials are chosen through personal relations, they may not be the most capable. The Legalist school emphasizes the usage of incentives and formal institutions. Under the Legalism, the ruler provides strong incentives to local officials which may lead to side effects because some activities are noncontractible. The cold-blood image of the Legalism may alien citizens. By exploiting the paternalistic relationship between the ruler and the ruled under Confucianism and the strength of institution-building under the …

Literacy And Cultural Assimilation In Rural China: A Report From The Interior, Amanda C.R. Clark

Library Faculty Scholarship

The American Library Association has long been concerned with the promotion of literacy, particularly as it pertains to the equity and global universality of access to information. When libraries focus on the accessibility of information, literacy is understandably an initial step in the process. This essay focuses on challenges to literacy in rural China, and how technology may be improving access to information for many of the inland population.

Displaced In The Simulacrum: Migrant Workers And Urban Space In The World, Yanjie Wang

Asian and Asian American Studies Faculty Works

The article examines the construction of the World Expo Garden in Shanghai in 2010, in relation to Jia Zhangke’s 2004 film The World. It argues that during the process of large-scale demolition and reconstruction involved in the creation of the World Expo Garden, one cannot ignore the numerous migrant workers who swarmed into the city and contributed tremendously to the completion of one project after another. This article argues that in spite of their pivotal role in providing cheap labor to rebuild the city, migrant workers have not been afforded any space in the spectacular tapestry of Shanghai. This article …

崑南及其小說研究 (1955-2009), Wai Chung Chan

Lingnan Theses

崑南(岑崑南 (1935-) 是香港一個頗富傳奇性的作家。50-60 年代，他是「現代主義」文學的一名猛將。60 年代中後期，崑南卻放棄了自己的「文藝」理想， 創辦了以流行音樂、影視、星座、消費為主的《香港青年周報》(1967)、《新周 報》(1972)等流行刊物，約至77 年中後期才因經濟問題而告終。此後崑南一直徘徊在文藝創作和通俗創作之間，掙扎不已。期間他對文學的信念和作家的自我定位日漸低落。88 年末，崑南更一度放棄創作，投入自己星座研究及個人的世界之中約7年。直至95 年中，崑南在朋友的鼓勵和支持下回歸文字創作，此後他對文學的熱情和創作意慾亦日漸見濃，不時在不同的報刊、雜誌、文藝刊物發表小說、詩歌、散文等不同作品，創辦多份文藝雜誌並擔個編輯。

本論文主要有三章，其中第一章共分成六個部份，分別討論不同時期崑南的文學活動與小說創作。全文梳理了近半個世紀之間，崑南在香港文學環境中， 在「文藝」和「通俗」兩種創作方向的來回掙扎與矛盾的心路歷程。本論文的第二章，主要疏理崑南各個時期的小說創作，其中就各小說中的情態意緒、敍事手法、語言運用等方面變化等方面來崑南「性與女體」書寫的特色。第三章主要以較宏觀的角度討論崑南的文學態度，並重點討論報紙副刊作為通俗載體 的限制和可能，藉以反思其與香港的文化環境和作家心態之間的關係。