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Charter 08: Five Links

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The biggest China news story of the moment is the issuance of Charter 08, a declaration that was created to mark the 60th anniversary of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights and is inspired in part by “Charter 77,” the famous Czech group, and the arrest and detention of some of its signatories. Here are five things to read to help put the document into context, or learn more about those being help because of it.

1) Charter 08 itself, translated into English by Perry Link, can be found here.

2) A sophisticated exploration of the events of 1989 …

From Iron Girls To Oriental Beauties, Hongmei Li

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

In a piece I did for the Huffington Post on women and the Olympics, I provided a brief overview of the history of ideas about feminine beauty in China and their links to concepts of modernity. This post supplements it by looking at the shift in representations of women from celebrating iron girls to extolling Oriental beauties over the course of the still relatively short history of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

During the three decades that followed the 1949 founding of the PRC, one goal promoted in official discourse was that of erasing gender differences and promoting gender …

Dead Man Talking, Zhang Lijia

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

On July 1 this year, a masked man named Yang Jia forced his way into the Zhabei police bureau in Shanghai, armed with a knife. In a killing rampage, he left six policemen dead and four injured. Last Wednesday, the 28-year-old unemployed man from Beijing was executed by lethal injection after the Supreme People’s Court decided to uphold the death sentence.

There was little surprise for the fate of a cop-murderer in a country where more people are thought to be killed by the capital punishment than the rest of the world combined. Yet the accused seems to have become …

Global Shanghai News

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Regular readers of this blog may think it is a bit redundant for me to do a “Self-promotion Saturday” post about Global Shanghai, 1850-2010: A History in Fragments, since I’ve managed to slip references to and images of the cover of my new book onto the site already in recent a piece about the 1980s and one about the Beijing Forum, cell phones, and a Chinese Obama joke.

Still, when you’ve worked on a publication as long as I labored on this one (even though it is a short, it took well over a decade to get from first inspiration …

Epicurean China: A Book Report, Kate Merkel-Hess

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Browsing the new book shelf of the local public library this week, I noticed not one but a whole selection of books that delve into the regional cuisines of China. Just last summer, Nina and Tim Zagat wrote an op-ed for The New York Times titled, “Eating Beyond Sichuan,” in which they called for greater diversity in the Chinese cuisine dished up around the U.S.—something more akin to the taste bud thrills anyone visiting or living in China experiences on a daily basis. There are intimations of Chinese cuisine diversity to come—such as the much-hailed developments in areas populated by …

Early Critics Of Deng Xiaoping—A 1978 Flashback, Jeff Wasserstrom

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Americans associate bottom-up challenges to Deng Xiaoping with images of the massive 1989 protests. But those demonstrations were not the first acts of dissent Deng had to deal with by any means. More than a decade earlier, right after his Reform era began, came the “Democracy Wall Movement”—named for a Beijing area where critics started putting up posters (some of which warned of Deng becoming a dictator) in 1978. The term “democracy wall” had been used for comparable spaces back in the 1940s (when Chiang Kai-shek’s authoritarianism was being attacked) and again during 1957’s “Hundred Flowers” campaign. The 1957 precedent …

Whose Peoples’ Games?, James Leibold

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

With the self-professed slogans of the Green Olympics, High-tech Olympics and the People’s Olympics, the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG) should have anticipated criticism. It left nothing to chance in hosting the world’s athletes and spectators—gleaming stadia, smiling faces and blue skies: all as ordered. But as many Western observers noted, BOCOG forgot to invite the Chinese people—with security guards, CCTV cameras and robot-like volunteers ensuring little spontaneity or popular emotion at the so-called People’s Games.

In the wake of the unprecedented media coverage of China’s global “coming out party,” few have paused to consider who and …

A Soulful Memoir Of 1980s China

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

I think that no matter when I read it, I would have been impressed by Lijia Zhang’s“Socialism is Great!” A Worker’s Memoir of the New China. There is simply a lot to like about any book that is well crafted, unsparingly honest, and alternately poignant and amusing. And these adjectives all apply to Zhang’s tale.

One sign of the care the author takes is that she neatly bookends the part of her life story she gives up with a pair of very different sorts of acts of rebellion. Readers first meet the narrator as she chafes at the idea of …

Zhao Ziyang’S Legacy And 6/4 Memories

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

As we prepare to mark the 30th anniversary of one turning point in the history of Chinese dissent (the appearance of Wei Jingsheng’s “Fifth Modernization” poster on December 5, 1978, the subject of a post we’ll run later this week), a debate on another major turning point (the 1989 protests and June 4th Massacre) may be re-emerging within China ahead of its 30th anniversary. One of the earliest reports (in English) that the Ministry of Culture had sought the resignation of the editor of the well-regarded magazine Yanhuang Chunqiu over its recent cover story praising purged leader Zhao Ziyang was …

Catch That Pepsi Spirit: Photo Update

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

When Micki McCoy and Kelly Hammond sent China Beat the interview they conducted about Hammond’s participation in an international Pepsi commercial shoot in Xinjiang, we had a tough time tracking down images or videos. Though we still haven’t seen the commercial in full (let us know if you find it online), Hammond did recently send this photo of a “Mexican Uyghur” taken during filming. If that doesn’t make any sense to you, take a look at the original interview‘s discussion of the issues of nationalism, ethnicity, and commercialism that the Pepsi shoot raised for Hammond. Tags: Pepsi,

Web Portals To Taiwan’S Past

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

One of the blessings of the Internet Age is the availability of valuable information about the past, in this case Taiwanese history. This post introduces a few English and Chinese websites that I have found most interesting/useful. The list is hardly meant to be exhaustive, and people should feel free to recommend other sites that would benefit all those interested in this topic.

1. The Gerald Warner Taiwan Image Collection — Put together by Paul Barclay at Lafayette College, this website contains 340 photographs and postcards gathered by Warner from 1937 to 1941 during and after his tenure as U.S. …

I Know It’S Only Rock’N’Roll (But They Don’T Like It)—The Sequel…, Jeff Wasserstrom

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

My next posts were all supposed to deal with my recent trip to China, but news about the long-awaited Guns’n’Roses release, “Chinese Democracy,” stirring up controversy in China is something that I can’t resist weighing in on. I won’t go into details about whether or how it has actually been banned in Beijing, as you can find out about that other places, including here and here. And I don’t need to fill you in on the China-related content of the album (a work I hasten to admit I haven’t heard yet), as that is covered thoroughly in an excellent Huffington …

China In 2008: Pre-Orders Now Available

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The weekend after Thanksgiving is the beginning of the Christmas shopping season, but if you’d like to avoid the crush at the malls, China in 2008 now has its own webpage, where you can order a copy for all those hard-to-gift friends (especially if they don’t mind it arriving in March–the release date for the book…).

In Case You Missed It: Post-Mao China

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Last year, the Association for Asian Studies inaugurated a new series of booklets under their “Resources for Teaching About Asia” branch called “Key Issues in Asian Studies.” The first two booklets in the series were published in 2007: Political Rights in Post-Mao China by Merle Goldman and Gender, Sexuality, and Body Politics in Modern Asia by Michael Peletz. (Those interested in applying to write a “Key Issues” booklet should see the AAS’s author guidelines.)

Goldman’s book on political rights in contemporary China canvases the factions that dominated political discussions in the post-Mao era, and is key reading for those who …

Thanksgiving In China…?

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Despite calls several years ago for a Chinese Thanksgiving Day, Thanksgiving hasn’t caught on in China as Christmas has. And with good reason–the holiday hasn’t brought much to China other than (last year) Paris Hilton.

But tomorrow begins the Christmas shopping season (a holiday that has caught on in some places in China–if largely for its commercial meanings), and this new holiday may have more dire implications in China this year. Analysts are predicting slow Christmas sales in the U.S., which may mean a slow season for Chinese manufacturers as well.

In Case You Missed It: Three Faces Of Chinese Power, Eric Setzekorn

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

David Lampton, a distinguished professor of international relations at SAIS, knows this is a great time to publish a book on Chinese power. As a new administration, which he may play a role in, attempts to craft a balanced and articulate China policy, his newest effort, The Three Faces of Chinese Power; Might, Money and Minds, will be influential and widely read. The book is a comprehensive and largely successful attempt to grasp the motivation, intent and challenges for Chinese international relations as China becomes a global leader and East Asia the center of world economic, political and military power. …

The Problem Of China: A Revisitation, Peter Zarrow

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Even though Dewey and Tagore have gotten more attention lately in scholarly works on Chinese education and ruminations of Chinese interactions with other countries, we at China Beat remain equally interested in the third famous foreign philosopher who gave a high profile set of lectures to audiences in Beijing and other cities during the aftermath of World War I: Bertrand Russell.

We thought about him when running our series on Jonathan Spence’s Reith Lectures, since Russell gave the inaugural ones sixty years before that. And we think of him when perusing the sections of Chinese bookstores devoted to philosophical matters …

2008 Awards

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

We are healthily skeptical about the newsworthiness of award recipients — prizes don’t, after all, always go to the right people. But a well-bequeathed award can draw attention to an intriguing book or piece of writing that one might have otherwise missed.

In an attempt at a premature 2008 awards wrap-up, here are a few that you might have overlooked.

1. There was consternation from the Chinese state in August and September over the mention that activist Hu Jia might be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. While he didn’t win the Nobel, he was awarded the Sakharov Prize by the …

Recommendation: "Garden Of Contentment"

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

If you haven’t already stumbled across Fuchsia Dunlop’s piece in last week’s New Yorker on a Hangzhou restaurant that uses only local food, it’s worth a read. Dunlop, author of two Chinese cookbooks and the recently-published memoirShark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper, describes her trip to visit Dai Jianjun, owner of the Dragon Well Manor, which serves a prix fixe menu to diners (starting at about 300 yuan) “prepared with local ingredients according to the theories of Chinese medicine and the solar terms of the old agricultural calendar.” Here’s a short excerpt:

Dai’s main worry is that traditional farming and cooking …

Peng Mulan In China

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

As part of our continuing follow-up on “China Beatniks in Beijing,” we wanted to share with you a couple links to articles on the talk Kenneth Pomeranz (彭慕兰) gave at Qinghua University, here and here (both in Chinese). Pomeranz’s talk for the Beijing Forum was at Diaoyutai State Guesthouse, the site of Nixon and Mao’s meeting as well as the former home of Jiang Qing. Here are few pictures:

Playing Politics With Cats And Dogs, Jeff Wasserstrom

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

As regular readers of this blog already know, I recently crossed the Pacific to take part in the Beijing Forum, a fascinating if sometimes hard to figure out event that was valuable in part simply because of how many different countries were represented by at least one presenter. How often, after all, does an American academic find himself or herself in a room where there is an exchange of opinions going on between a scholar based in Moscow and a scholar based in Cairo, or hears an administrator from a university in Nairobi respond to comments his counterparts from Sri …

China Hax!1!

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Chinese hackers may (we should stress, may) have struck again. Just two weeks after Newsweek reported (in the juicy campaign expose published in last week’s issue) that last summer both the Obama and McCain campaign computers were infiltrated by hackers who copied documents on policy issues (speculated to be either Chinese or Russian), yesterday Fox News announced that the Pentagon was banning the use of external computing hardware after a worm was found to bespreading through its computing network.

There do not seem to be any online reports linking the new regulation specifically to Chinese hackers, but Fox News anchors …

Protest In China: Further Readings

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

With protest in the news, here are some places to turn for accessible academic readings that help place unrest into perspective. One thing worth noting in the list is that while some touch upon, none specifically focuses on Tiananmen per se. The events of 1989 are important; we’ve put up material related to them before; we doubtless will again, especially as the twentieth anniversary of the June 4th Massacre approaches. Still, sometimes the shadow of the 1989 protests can make it harder to discern the meaning of current events, especially when the outbursts don’t take the form of student-led demonstrations. …

Catch That Pepsi Spirit

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

This interview was conducted over email between Kelly Hammond and Micki McCoy in parallel with McCoy’s article in Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art(forthcoming January/February 2009) on the depiction of ethnic minorities in propaganda posters in the People’s Republic of China made prior to the Opening and Reform. The posters can be seen as historical predecessors for contemporary official depictions of ethnic diversity such as that seen at the 2008 Olympics Opening Ceremonies. Yet this imagery is distinct from current commercial visualizations of ethnicity and nationality in the PRC, as described in the interview below regarding Hammond’s participation in a …

A Reader: Protests And Public Relations

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

This morning the Los Angeles Times reported on a riot in Gansu that was touched off over disagreements on city planning issues. The report comes on the heels of an uptick in news in the last week on local protests in China. It is unclear if this increased coverage represents an actual increase in local protests (based on reports from the Chinese government in recent years, there are hundreds of local protests each week in China) or if the economic crisis has simply increased the relevance of these protests.

But much of the coverage we’ve been reading has been less …

G. William Skinner, Daniel Little

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

G. William Skinner was one of the most innovative social scientists to have turned his attention to China in the past thirty years. Bill passed away on October 25, 2008, but his influence on how we think about China will survive him for a long, long time. (See this list of Skinner’s publications to get an impression of the depth and scope of his contributions.) Bill was a generous and open scholar, and many scholars working in the field today owe him a permanent debt of gratitude for his advice and support in the past several decades. (See this Chinese …

Murder Most Foul

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Both the Guangxu Emperor and Empress Dowager Cixi died one hundred years ago this week (November 14 and November 15, respectively), and some of our favorite news sites and blogs have been commemorating the anniversaries, made more newsworthy by the recent revelations that Guangxu was (as has long been suspected) poisoned. Here’s a short reading guide for whodunnit (the debate continues) and further reflections:

1. NPR’s Louisa Lim on the latest theories of Guangxu’s death:

“Guangxu died just 22 hours before the 74-year-old Empress Dowager Cixi. Imperial medical records indicated that Guangxu’s death was due to natural causes. But even …

China Beatniks In Beijing: Ii

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Yong Chen, UCI history professor and China Beat contributor, was one of several of our regular contributors to attend the Beijing Forum, an international meeting of scholars to discuss vital issues facing the world. This year’s theme for the conference was “The Harmony of Civilizations and Prosperity for All” (“文明的和谐与共同繁荣”) and aimed at promoting the development of the social sciences and humanities in the Asia-Pacific region.

While in Beijing, Yong Chen gave a talk on “Chinese-Americans and the American Government.” A report about this talk has been posted (in Chinese) by Yong’s former Beijing University classmate, Yang Yusheng, at the …

Wild Strawberries

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The past week has witnessed the appearance of the Wild Strawberries Student Movement (野草莓學運; see website), formed in the aftermath of state attempts to curtail peaceful expressions of free speech during the visit of ARATS Chairman Chen Yunlin 陳雲林. These actions prompted over 200 students to launch a sit-inoutside the Executive Yuan, and after being evicted from their original location the students transferred the sit-in to Liberty Plaza (自由廣場). They have received petitions of support from over 500 university professors, while other sit-ins have been staged throughout the island.

At this point in time, the movement’s goals include: 1) Apologies …

Coming Distractions: Two Kinds Of Time, Robert A. Kapp

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The first big crush of incipient China specialists after World War II marched into America’s graduate schools in the early and mid-1960s, particularly after the enactment of the National Defense Education Act made large amounts of federal money available for “Foreign Area Studies” and “Critical Language Studies.”

I was one of the marchers. Having finished college, with virtually no exposure to anything Asian, in the spring of 1964, I began six long years of graduate study that fall. The new life began at 8 a.m. on, I think, September 22, in my first language class: Chinese I. It was a …