International and Area Studies Commons^™

Where To Begin: New Perspectives On Chinese Labor, Mark W. Frazier

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Studies of labor in China have taken an exciting turn in recent years with the publication of numerous rich and revealing portraits of workers, their jobs, and their place in Chinese politics and in the global economy. As thousands of migrant workers employed in auto parts suppliers for Toyota and Honda went on strike in May and June of 2010, some headlines heralded a political coming of age for China’s migrant workers. While it’s too early to assess the impact of these strikes, it is clear that migrant workers have gained a level of organizational sophistication and political awareness to …

One Day, Two Birthdays

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Most of the people in Philadelphia this holiday weekend have come for the Fourth of July festivities, such as readings of the Declaration of Independence and tours of Independence Hall. This year, however, a special event was part of the city’s eleven-day “Welcome America!” celebration: on Saturday, July 3, a street fair in Philadelphia’s Chinatown marked not only the 234th birthday of the United States, but also the 140th birthday of the Chinatown neighborhood itself (the district’s founding is dated to the establishment of a laundry at 9th and Race Streets in 1870). The afternoon was filled with musical performances, …

A Transcendent Moment In The Land Of Haibao

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

I’m finally in Shanghai, where the Gumby-like Haibao is amazingly even more omnipresent than the last time I was through (and then he seemed to be everywhere). I’ve come to check out the Expo, see some new sites, catch up with some old friends, do a bit of traveling, and, as I noted in an earlier post, take part in a dialog on World’s Fairs past and present with Nick Land (that took place a few days ago) and host a weekly series of “Cosmopolitan Conversations” with assorted writers at the Glamour Bar at M on the Bund (those are …

Over Exposure, Lisa Movius, Shakhar Rahav

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

“The Expo story that couldn’t be printed.” That’s what editors at Shanghai’s City Weekend magazine found they had on their hands several weeks ago, when Chinese censors deemed the story below “too negative” to run. A revised version was subsequently submitted, approved by the censors, and printed in the January 20, 2010 issue. City Weekend decided not to post the original story on its website as planned, as they were told it was inadvisable due to an official caution against publishing media reports critical of the Expo. Here, we are pleased to share with China Beat readers the full, uncensored …

China Learns From The Soviet Union: An Interview With Thomas P. Bernstein

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Thomas Bernstein, professor emeritus of Government at Columbia University, has recently edited a new book with Hua-yu Li, China Learns from the Soviet Union, 1949-present (Lexington Books, 2010). Below, an interview we conducted with Professor Bernstein via e-mail, exploring the volume’s scope and how it came into being.

Yo! Aas Is Coming To The City Of Brotherly Love, Maura Elizabeth Cunningham

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

I’d very much like to be in China this month, as several cities are hosting big literary events that feature many authors I’ve followed for the past several years, and whose names are probably familiar to regular China Beat readers. In Beijing, the Bookworm International Literary Festival is welcoming Graham Earnshaw (The Great Walk of China, March 6), Jonathan Tel (The Beijing of Possibilities, March 8; two excerpts are here and here), and Jeremy Goldkorn (Danwei, March 18). The Shanghai International Literary Festival is also boasting a program chock-full of talks I’d love to hear, such as Hyejin Kim on …

An Interview With Richard Mcgregor, Author Of The Party, Maura Elizabeth Cunningham

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Richard McGregor is the former Beijing bureau chief for the Financial Times and author of the newly released The Party: The Secret World of China’s Communist Rulers. I recently conducted the interview below with McGregor via e-mail; you can read excerpts from the book here and here and also find a “Why I Write” profile of McGregor at the Urbanatomy site.

Special Report: Thirty Years Of The One-Child Policy

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Scott Tong of Marketplace is concluding his three years as the program’s Shanghai bureau chief by taking an in-depth look at the One-Child Policy as it approaches its 30-year anniversary.

Confessions Of A Lifelong China Watcher, Angilee Shah

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Looking back on China’s dramatic recent history, from the devastation of the Great Leap Forward to today’s exuberant “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” is a fascinating exercise. China Watcher offers the rare opportunity to learn this history as author Richard Baum did — from the front row.

Notes On A Conversation: Ian Johnson And Angilee Shah, Miri Kim

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Earlier this week, we held the final event of this year’s “China Lecture Series” at UC Irvine, featuring a dialogue between Ian Johnson and Angilee Shah. Johnson, formerly of the Wall Street Journal, is author of Wild Grass: Three Stories of Change in Modern China and A Mosque in Munich: Nazis, the CIA, and the Rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in the West. Shah is a freelance writer and blogger; her work has appeared at the Far Eastern Economic Review, Global Voices Online, Zócalo Public Square, and The China Beat. Below, a summary of the conversation between Johnson and Shah.

Looking At China From Across The Pacific And Across The Himalayas, Jeffrey Wasserstrom

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

“Wouldn’t it make more sense to focus on Japan?”

Reflections On Qing History, Maura Dykstra

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

A review of Pamela Kyle Crossley’s The Wobbling Pivot: China Since 1800, An Interpretive History (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010) and William T. Rowe’s China’s Last Empire: The Great Qing (Belknap Press, 2009)

Around The Web: Podcasts And Videos

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Though we spend a lot of time reading over here at China Beat headquarters, we also like to keep up with the many China-related podcasts and videos that are proliferating on the web these days. A sampling of what’s caught our attention recently:

Blogging Aas 2010 (5), Miri Kim, Charles Wheeler

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

In this panel, organized by Siyen Fei (University of Pennsylvania), Mark Edward Lewis (Stanford University), Hilde De Weerdt (University of Oxford), and Fei presented papers that creatively engaged the work of G. William Skinner on how to conceptualize empire in time and space. Lewis proposed that the northern capital historically functioned as a peripheral center that connected the agricultural and economic centers found further south with the steppe, and this positioning, a prime concern of the dynasties founded by nomads, helped maintain China as a coherent empire. De Weerdt used social network analysis to mine Song dynastybiji for data that …

Blogging Aas (3), Miri Kim

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

This intellectually and visually stimulating roundtable was chaired by Carma Hinton (George Mason University) and focused on the legacy of China’s socialist past in China’s not-quite-so socialist present. I’d like to think I took good notes, but this was a session very rich in materials and ideas (and excellently managed time-wise, which means things moved along at a brisk pace), so apologies in advance for any errors or omissions.

If You Can Read Chinese, Read This E-Journal, Xujun Eberlein

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The new issue of Remembrance (<记忆>) continues to review Mao’s Last Revolution (by Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals; Chinese translation can be found here). The four articles in issues 55 and 56 discuss the book from different angles, with thoughtful comments and legitimate questions. All are well worth reading.

Anhui’S Barefoot Aids Doctors, Annie Ye Ren

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

For the past four years, I have periodically worked with a Chinese grassroots HIV/AIDS non-governmental organization (NGO) that serves children in Fuyang Prefecture, Anhui Province. The Fuyang AIDS Orphan Salvation Association (AOS)gives aid directly to local communities, addressing local needs that are often overlooked or underfunded by large-scale government projects.

A Chinese Immigrant Reads Yiyun Li, Xujun Eberlein

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Among the twenty-three people who received MacArthur Fellowships last month was Yiyun Li, a fiction writer based at the University of California, Davis. Born and raised in Beijing before coming to the United States for graduate work (first in immunology, later in creative writing), Li is one member of a growing community of Chinese authors now writing in English. We asked Xujun Eberlein, also part of that group, to reflect on Li’s writing.

Symbols: Liu Xiaobo’S Nobel Peace Prize, Paulina Hartono

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Liu Xiaobo is, and now is probably much more so after Friday’s announcement, one of China’s most well-known dissidents—or activists, depending on the term you prefer. Most people who have heard of him know about his hand in penning part of Charter 08, a manifesto based on Charter 77, which advocates broad democratic political reform and human rights protections in China. Those who are more familiar with Liu’s name know of him for his hunger strike in Tian’anmen, or his prolific number of essays published in print and on the Internet.

China By The Numbers: The Chinese Professor And The Red Emperor, Charles W. Hayford

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Remember those jailbirds who know all of each others’ jokes? They don’t tell the whole joke, just shout out the number from the jokebook. Our public discourse on China has something of the same quality. Instead of shouting out a number, however, somebody “shouts out” a word or an image which evokes a whole China story. These stories can be persuasive, poetic, or insightful, but when we only “shout out” the number, then we don’t have the chance to examine the whole story. Painful facts or challenges to venerable beliefs can be papered over when the story is a misleading …

On Michael Jackson In Mongolia, Hanging Out At Shanghai’S World’S Fair, And Other Topics: A Quick Q & A With Marketplace’S Rob Schmitz, Jeffrey Wasserstrom

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Over the summer, there was a changing of the guard in the Shanghai office ofMarketplace, an American radio program that has consistently carried smart reports about China. Scott Tong moved from the PRC back to the US (where he continues to work for the show) and former Peace Corps volunteer Rob Schmitztook his place. I had the pleasure of meeting them both in Shanghai in July andran a post with the former in early August, in which he reflected on his time covering the China beat. Now, as a sequel to that post, comes a quick q and a with …

What I Read On My Summer Vacation (Iv), Ron Javers

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

I was booked to give a China talk in August, high season in the Hamptons, as part of the summer series at the Rogers Memorial Library in Southampton.

Analysis Of The Recent Made-In-China Campaign, Hongmei Li

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

China has recently launched its first global advertising campaign about products made in China. A 30-second television commercial, sponsored by the Ministry of Commerce of China and four Chinese trade associations, has been running on CNN, the Headline News and International Asia TV channels in the United States since November 23, 2009. Costing tens of millions of Yuan, the commercial was scheduled to run for six weeks. The commercial also started to run in some parts of Asia starting in December 2009.

More On Google + China

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Now that we’ve all had a few days to think deeply about the Google + China story, lots of commentaries and opinion pieces are coming across the wire. Here’s a sampling of those that caught our attention over the weekend:

Travelogue, Delhi-Beijing, Pallavi Aiyar

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The plane burps to a halt and almost immediately everyone is on their feet, jostling to open the over-head lockers, reaching high for their strolleys. My head feels stuffed with lead and I marvel at the nimble alacrity of my fellow travellers, at 3:00 in the morning. Slowly we shuffle off the Air China flight and make it into the inadequately-air conditioned environs of Indira Gandhi International Airport.

Blogging Aas 2010 (2), William Callahan

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

One of the pleasures of going to a conference is seeing what free goodies you can scam from various institutions. Lots of free pens were proffered by various publishers. A Chinese press was giving out some trinkets — but for some reason not to me. The International Institute for Asian Studies (Leiden) was once again giving out sheer canvas bags loaded with their newsletter and other readable items. UBC Press offered 50-year-old issues of Pacific Affairs for the antiquarians among us, as well as more recent issues.

Palestinian Refugees: Protection In Exile, Vivienne Chew

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The Palestinian refugee problem is perhaps the most critical and complex of the outstanding issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Sixty-two years have now passed since the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, in which hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were displaced en masse and rendered stateless. Since then, successive generations of Palestinian refugees have endured discrimination, insecurity, repeated cycles of displacement, and infringement of their basic rights and freedoms.

Amazigh Legitimacy Through Language In Morocco, Sarah R. Fischer

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Contemporary Morocco rests at a geographic and developmental crossroads. Uniquely positioned on the Northwestern tip of Africa, Morocco is a short distance away from continental Europe, cradled between North African tradition and identity, and Western embrace. The landscape is varied: craggy mountains trail into desert oases; cobbled streets of the medina anchor the urban centers; mud homes dot the rural countryside. Obscured from the outside observer, behind the walls of the Imperial cities and between the footpaths of village olive groves, Morocco’s rich and diverse Arab and Amazigh cultures and languages circle one another in a contested dance. Morocco’s identity …

Establishing Governmental Legitimacy In Iraq: The Path To Protecting Human Rights, Matt Mines

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Rule of law is essential for ensuring the protection of human rights in post-conflict societies. Contention and disagreements, however, often arise regarding the best ways to establish rule of law in a reconstructive state. It is a vital prerequisite to rule of law that a government be viewed as legitimate. Following an armed conflict, the restoration of basic services and infrastructure is essential for instilling confidence that the government is legitimate and is capable of providing for the needs of the local populace. The essential services include water, electricity, and security on a consistent basis. In order to ensure ongoing …

Tunisia–The Imprisonment Of Fahem Boukadous (Part One Of A Series), Rob Prince

Human Rights & Human Welfare

To most Americans with the exception of those few who, for whatever reason, have an attachment to the North African country of Tunisia, the name Fahem Boukadous, foreign to American ears, means nothing. It means a good deal more to "Reporters Without Borders” and to the US State Department that actually issued a statement (half way down the page) on his behalf, to the US intelligence agencies and military that have carefully followed the Spring, 2008 uprising in the Tunisian region of Gafsa–deemed the most extensive and militant social protest in that country’s history in the past quarter century.

© …