International and Area Studies Commons^™

The Prc And Pr: Baffling Messages In Times Square?, Christopher C. Heselton

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Amid all the fanfare and fear-mongering over President Hu Jintao’s visit to the United States last week, the Chinese government has also launched an advertising campaign to enhance its national image in America. The campaign includes a 60-second ad showing on a mega screen at Time Square, New York, a 30-second segment at Gallery Place, Washington DC (DC’s “Chinatown,” though it’s a rather small one), and a series of 15-second advertisements airing on several news networks over a multi-week period. A host of Chinese celebrities, models, entrepreneurs, astronauts, and other household names appear in these advertisements, standing and smiling at …

“The Rise Of The Hans”: A Critique, Thomas S. Mullaney

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

“Rise of the Hans,” by Joel Kotkin, is a troubling article to find published in a high-profile venue such as Foreign Policy. It reinforces misleading ideas about China and is problematic for a variety of specific reasons, the biggest of which has to do with Kotkin’s use of key terms.

Bangladesh, Megan Adamson Sijapati

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Bangladesh (formally the People's Republic of Bangladesh) is a Muslim-majority parliamentary democracy located in South Asia. Originally called East Pakistan, it was created during the partition of India in 1947 as the eastern wing of the country of Pakistan. Its name was later changed to East Bengal and then to Bangladesh after its union with West Pakistan was broken following a bloody war of secession in 1971. [excerpt]

The Internet And China’S Response To The Japan Earthquake, Daniel Knorr

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

A few days after the Japan earthquake last month, the high school student I tutor asked if I had considered leaving Beijing with my wife. I had been keeping up with the news about the crisis at the Fukushima nuclear plant, and to the best of my knowledge there was no real threat to us in Beijing so I was a little surprised by his question. Even though I assumed the nuclear plant was the source of his concern, I asked what he was referring to. (Honestly, part of me was a little afraid that he knew something I didn’t.) …

Frivolous Friday: In Praise Of Jianbing 煎饼, Maura Elizabeth Cunningham

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Wednesday morning began like any other. I poured some cereal, made a pot of coffee, and flipped open my laptop to catch up on what had filled my Google Reader and Twitter feed overnight. One of the links I clicked on took me to Evan Osnos’s Condé Nast Traveler article about the ongoing “creative destruction” of Beijing, where my morning routine ended as soon as I read this paragraph:

A Quick Q & A With Tom Scocca–Author Ofbeijing Welcomes You, Jeffrey Wasserstrom

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Tom Scocca’s engaging new book, Beijing Welcomes You: Unveiling the Capital City of the Future, which explores his experiences in China during its pre-Olympic and Olympic moments, has been getting enthusiastic reviews, includingone by Jonathan Yardley of the Washington Post and one that yours truly did forTime. Seeing references online to the author giving talks about his book at various East Coast venues, I decided to send a few questions his way on topics ranging from the reaction he’s getting from audiences to how he keeps up with Chinese events now that he’s based back in the US. He readily …

Dalian’S Past, Dalian’S Present, Part 2, Miriam Kingsberg

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The tens of thousands of Dalian residents who gathered this weekend to demand the relocation of a chemical plant were responding to a contemporary situation. Their protest, though, reflected a complicated relationship among the people, the state, and the environment that was inscribed in the city from the very moment of its founding.

Screening Tiananmen, Chris Berry

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Recently, I’ve been spending a lot more time in Shanghai than in Beijing. This is because of a research project comparing moving image screens—mostly Lighting-Emitting Diode (LED) screens—as part of everyday culture in public places in Cairo, Shanghai and London. (If you’re interested, you can read more about that here.) But in the meantime, I had heard about the Jumbotron screen installed in the middle of Tiananmen Square. So, when I made it back to Beijing for the first time since just before the 2008 Olympics to do a bit of teaching at the Chinese Film summer school organized by …

Reading Round-Up, 1/11/11

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

• When a football game between the Philadelphia Eagles and Minnesota Vikings was canceled in late December due to heavy snow in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell was not pleased. Calling the United States “a nation of wusses,” Rendell went on to say

The Man In The Picture

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Earlier this week, we published Alice Miller’s post on what wasn’t new about Hu Jintao’s recent comments on human rights; at about the same time, Time.com posted a commentary by China Beat consulting editor Jeffrey Wasserstrom that listed other things that weren’t novel about the recent summit.

China Events In Southern California, February 8-22

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

China Beat readers living in and around the Southern California region might want to check out one or more of these events in the upcoming weeks:

Reading Round-Up: Richard Mcgregor’S The Party

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Financial Times journalist Richard McGregor is this year’s recipient of the Asia Society’s Bernard Schwartz Book Award for his 2010 investigation into Chinese leadership, The Party: The Secret World of China’s Communist Rulers. If you haven’t caught up with McGregor’s book yet, here are a few links about it to whet your appetite:

Harbin’S Past, Modern Style, James Carter

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Historical preservation in China’s ever-growing cities is a challenge. Transformations to Beijing and Shanghai are best documented (for example, as evocatively narrated by Michael Meyer in his Last Days of Old Beijing), but dozens of cities, up and down the coast especially, are witnessing historically rapid change, and a rapid change to their histories.

Factories Without Smoke: Wang Jia Yi And Gao Tian Ci, Chris Cherry

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Wang Jia Yi and Gao Tian Ci, Dalian to San Li Village, Anhui Province

“How Can We Hope To Make A Living If Our Roots Are Cut?”: Track-Laying, Modernization, And People’S Livelihood In Republican Beijing, Jared Hall

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

In a post yesterday at this site, I discussed recent cleavages between the rapidly expanding Beijing Subway and segments of the public the system is meant to serve. In that post, I pointed to residents who voiced concerns about property seizures, safety lapses, and excessive noise from nearby tracks. When the subway corporation attempted to shut out community objections related to each of these issues, residents then utilized a common repertoire of protest that included petitions, visits to government offices, and public demonstrations.

Chinese Tour Groups In Europe, Chinese Tour Groups In Yunnan: Narrating A Nation In The World, Tami Blumenfield

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The first winter I stayed with a Moso (sometimes spelled Mosuo) family in southwest China, my weeks of Naru language tutoring did not help me get very far in understanding their conversations. I had trouble sorting out the names and relationships of the ten to eighteen family members who ate meals together and lived in that household. The apu (grandfather) joked to me that I, an American citizen who had been living in China, was now in the foreign country’s foreign country; no wonder I was disoriented. Their corner of Yunnan was culturally and linguistically distinct from other parts of …

China’S Water Challenges: A Quick Q & A With Environmental Historian Kenneth Pomeranz, Jeffrey Wasserstrom

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Ken Pomeranz, Kate Merkel-Hess and I had various reasons for launching this blog at the start of 2008. One thing that led us to start the venture, at a time when Kate was the only one of us with any blogging experience, was simply a sense that some of the things that we were saying to one another over lunch and in the hallways at UC Irvine might be of interest to people in other places who were working on, living in, or just curious about China. As much as the venture has developed since then (adding new contributors continually, …

Excerpt: Why Taiwan Matters: Small Island, Global Powerhouse, Shelley Rigger

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Taipei 101, the blue-green glass tower that reigned for six years as the world’s tallest building, is everywhere in Taiwan. Its image appears on advertisements, magazine covers, brochures, guidebooks, and billboards; the soaring structure itself is visible from nearly everywhere in Taipei City. As ubiquitous as Shanghai’s Oriental Pearl TV tower—and considerably more graceful—Taipei 101 has become the iconic image of contemporary Taiwan.

Soft Power With Chinese Characteristics: Promoting Creative Industries While Maintaining Political Control, Thomas Glucksmann-Smith

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

On October 15-18th 2011 during the latest Plenary Session of the 17th CPC Central Committee, China’s leaders discussed ways to make China a ‘culturally strong nation’ (文化强国) and defined strategies to enhance China’s international soft power. This meeting coincided with tax evasion charges laid against China’s world renowned artist Ai Weiwei—charges he now plans to challenge.

Ai Weiwei, recently described by Art Review as the ‘world’s most powerful artist’ would, in any other nation, be regarded as a perfect diplomat for his country’s cultural industries. But, for China’s CCP leaders Mr Ai’s political activism and provocative behaviour has gone too …

The Ister: Between The Documentary And Heidegger’S Lecture Course Politics, Geographies, And Rivers, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

The Ister, the 2004 documentary by the Australian scholars and videographers, David Barison, a political theorist, and Daniel Ross, a philosopher, appeals to Martin Heidegger’s 1942 lecture course, Hölderlins Hymne «Der Ister»and the video takes us «backward» as the river flows: beginning from the Danube’s delta where it ends in the sea and «journeying» with it to its source in the Alps.

the value of the Barison/Ross documentary for both political theory and philosophy is its illustration of the technological incursions or assaults on the river itself, that is to say: its representation of the ‘uses’ and hence …

Bhutan, Megan Adamson Sijapati

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Bhutan (formally the Kingdom of Bhutan) is a small, landlocked Buddhist constitutional monarchy in the eastern Himalayas, located between China's Tibetan autonomous region and India. Its terrain is largely mountainous, and its economy is based on agriculture and forestry. Bhutan's official national language is Dzongkha, and its multiethnic population, reported in the 2005 govrnment census to be approximately 681,000, is 75% Buddhist and 25% Hindu.

Nepal, Megan Adamson Sijapati

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Nepal is a democratic republic located along the southern region of the Himalayan range, bordering India to the south, west, and east and the Tibetan autonomous region of China to the north. Though a small country in geographic terms (approximately 54,362 square miles [1 mile = 1.6093 kilometers]), its population of approximately 29.5 million people is a complex and heterogeneous mix of both Indo-European and Tibeto-Burman ethnic groups and castes, each with distinct languages and religious and cultural traditions. [excerpt]

International Graffiti And The Israeli Separation Barrier, Veronica Evangelina Miranda

Theses Digitization Project

This purpose of this study is to show that graffiti can be more than mere vandalism and can be a powerful way of communicating resistance to injustice when used as protest. Graffiti on the Israeli Separation Barrier is one way people can speak against an oppressive force that alters their physical environment, which can be a site of continuous argument.

Caring Work: Opening A Space Of Possibility For Exploring Transnational Feminist Solidarity Between Privileged And Marginalized Women, Beverly Romero Natividad

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Neoliberalism, through its emphasis on personal responsibility and individual freedom in accelerating economic development globally, has only pushed women further into the margin of society. Structural adjustment programs (SAPs), which impose state budget cuts on healthcare and welfare programs, particularly have kept poor women and women of color in poverty and generally, have exploited women's labor. However, in this age of neoliberalism, women's solidarity becomes more significant. Because neoliberalism is founded on individualism, its downfall rests on alliance-building. Against this backdrop, I explore the possibility of fostering transnational feminist solidarity between privileged and marginalized women engaged in formal caring work. …

Fighting Back: Indigenous Mobilization In The Ecuadorian, Peruvian And Brazilian Amazon, Emily Culver

Latin American and Latino Studies Honors Papers

Progress, as defined by this thesis, is the continuing placement of profits over human beings. The pursuit of progress in Latin America has its roots in the colonial age when elites created a hierarchical system that served only their own interest and marginalized other members of their populations. Progress is particularly negative for indigenous people in the Amazonian region who find themselves giving up their land, resources and in turn their traditional lifestyles for the benefits of outsiders.

This framework has manifested itself in several examples: oil exploration and exploitation in Ecuador and Peru, rubber in Brazil and later hydroelectric …

Reader Responses: Celebrating Jianbing, Maura Elizabeth Cunningham

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

[Editor’s note: It seems that quite a few of our readers are as fond of jianbing as we are here at China Beat HQ. This morning’s post on the tasty breakfast dish garnered a number of responses on Twitter (revealing that not everyone is a fan, though all have strong feelings on the jianbing issue), which I’ve collected below, followed by one story sent in by a reader via email. And fellow UC Irvine graduate student Aubrey Adams directed my attention to this basic recipe for jianbing, in case I (or anyone else) wants to attempt making them at home.]

Soft Power Struggle: Ai Weiwei And The Limits Of Sino-German Cultural Cooperation, Adam Cathcart

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

As an attempt to drain the seemingly endless reserves of paranoia fed by China’s rise, the extension of Chinese “soft power” [ruan shi li 软实力] into Western Europe is one of the more interesting stories of our day. How the Chinese Communist Party uses culture and cultural exchange to shape its image in Europe varies, like any good guerrilla strategy, depending on conditions. In the performing arts, PRC-sponsored groups tour European stages, acting out a meta-drama that pits twirling autonomous-region Uighurs against the ubiquitous Falun Gong-affiliated Shen Yun ballerinas (and their army of granny pamphleteers). Embassy-sponsored photographic exhibits celebrating modernization …

Institutions, The Rise Of Commerce And The Persistence Of Laws: Interest Restrictions In Islam And Christianity, Jared Rubin

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

Why was economic development retarded in the Middle East relative to Western Europe, despite the Middle East being far ahead for centuries? A theoretical model inspired and substantiated by the history of interest restrictions suggests that this outcome emanates in part from the greater degree to which early Islamic political authorities derived legitimacy from religious authorities. This entailed a feedback mechanism in Europe in which the rise of commerce led to the relaxation of interest restrictions while also diminishing the Church's ability to legitimise political authorities. These interactions did not occur in the Islamic world despite equally amenable economic conditions.

L’Évolution Du Patrimoine: Identity Politics And Cultural Policy In Contemporary Senegalese Art, 1960-2010, Hannah Shambroom

Art History Honors Papers

No abstract provided.

The Olympics In East Asia: Nationalism, Regionalism, And Globalism On The Center Stage Of World Sports, William W. Kelly, Susan Brownell

CEAS Occasional Publication Series

Yale CEAS Occasional Publication Series - Volume 3