Asian Studies Commons^™

Tibet 5: In The Third Week

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

With the crisis in Tibet entering its third week, we continue to sweep the web in search of interesting and/or informative pieces to bring to the attention of our readers. This fifth installment in the series is heavily devoted to retrospective works, which go back in time, either to detail what took place in Tibet in the past or explore historical analogies useful for thinking through the contemporary situation. Still, since the story continues to unfold and take surprising turns, we also include links to pieces that track very recent developments, both on the ground and in the debate over …

The Taelspin On Tibet: The Chinese Response To Foreign Media Coverage Of The 3.14 Unrest

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Foreign media coverage of the demonstrations and riots in Lhasa, Qinghai,Sichuan, and Gansu two weeks ago has sparked a significant backlash here in China. State media continues to release increasingly shrill diatribes against Western media bias as Chinese netizens take to the internet with their own protests sparked by a general perception that coverage of the riots was purposely warped and skewed by anti-China forces in the West. (For a sampling in English, check out the back and forth on this forum hosted by that bastion of journalistic integrity and objectivity: The China Daily.) There’s a whole website devoted to …

Tibet Reading 4

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The coverage and dialogue about the situation in Tibet has continued over the past days, evolving largely (in great part due to foreign media’s lack of access to Tibet and neighboring provinces where unrest has occurred) into a discussion on China’s media clampdown and the way the Tibet riots and subsequent protests are being read in China and abroad. Here are some of the apropos things we’ve been reading in recent days.

1. On Danwei.org, an intriguing short piece on YouTube videos, which asks if this might be “the world’s first international user generated propaganda war?”

2. When the crisis …

Coming Distractions: Wolf Totem, Nicole Barnes

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

In just a few days, famed translator Howard Goldblatt’s latest book, Wolf Totem, will be released to eager readers of Chinese literature in English translation. Having proven his mettle as translator of Xiao Hong’s angsty prose and Mo Yan’s morbidly lascivious novels, Goldblatt has now tried his hand at a certain piece of nostalgic drivel that leaked from the pen of Jiang Rong, a newly acclaimed novelist whose original work, Lang Tuteng, appeared in 2004 after more than 30 years of labor and immediately shot to the top of the bestseller lists, selling two million bookstore copies and countless more …

China Travel: Finding The "Real" China, Kate Merkel-Hess

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

I recently received two new travel books (of sorts) in my mailbox, one of which I wrote a few short bits for. Beijing Time by Michael Dutton, with Hsiu-ju Stacy Lo and Dong Dong Wu, (due out in May from Harvard University Press) andUrbanatomy: Shanghai 2008, edited by Nick Land (published by China Intercontinental Press in 2007) fall at opposite ends of a rather loosely envisioned “travel book” spectrum, but both promise an on-the-ground look at “new” China.

Beijing Time, by Goldsmiths, University of London Professor of Politics Michael Dutton and independent scholars Hsiu-ju Stacy Lo and Dong Dong Wu …

Tibet: Background On Current Events And Their History

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

A third installment of readings on Tibet.

1) This insightful piece on the economic roots of discontent in Tibet by Pankaj Mishra, an Indian intellectual who wrote an illuminating essay in the New Yorker last year about the impact of the new railroad through the Himalayas and recently was in China.

2) A careful day-to-day reconstruction of events, which highlight violence done by both sides on dramatic individual days such as March 14.

3) A fascinating look at the life and thought of the Dalai Lama by Pico Iyer, who has just published a book based on many years of …

It’S Still The Economy, Stupid

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Ma Ying-jeou’s convincing victory in Taiwan’s presidential election shows that the politics of fear are no match for the politics of the pocketbook. While the sight of four KMT legislators trying to force their way into the DPP campaign headquarters raised the specter of a return to the dreaded days of the White Terror, a majority of voters seem to have been convinced by the slew of apologies that followed, and assumed that Ma’s victory would end eight years of government gridlock that had contributed to Taiwan’s economic slowdown. While Ma’s hesitancy to explain whether he had formally renounced his …

The Election In Taiwan: The View From And Implications For The United States, Yong Chen

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

As American attention is captivated by the war in Iraq and, more recently, our own upcoming national election, another important event is about to take place on the other side of the Pacific Ocean: the presidential election of Taiwan on March 21 (March 22 local time). This event is of great importance to the United States for a number of reasons. First, there is the economic significance of Taiwan, which has emerged in recent decades as an important player in the global economy, especially in the IT sector. For instance, over 90% of the world’s OEM notebook PCs comes out …

Tibet: Further Reading

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

A few days ago, we published a handful of links to websites providing good or unique coverage of events or history related to the situation in Tibet. Here are six more.

1) A very timely joint review of two new books (one by noted travel writer Pico Iyer) that place Tibetan history and the Dalai Lama’s life into perspective have just appeared on the Economist‘s website.

2) An interesting extended look at how the current unrest compares with and is linked to events of the 1950s and 1980s, written by an adviser to the Tibetan government in exile.

3) If …

In Case You Missed It: China Road, Maura Elizabeth Cunningham

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

So many authors and pundits today attempt to predict China’s future by looking at the numbers: GDP, population, military spending, trade surplus, environmental measurements. Taking any combination of these figures, it is easy to declare that China is either a rising superpower, destined for world domination, or a teetering giant, bound only for disaster. The fact that both perspectives can—and have—been argued indicates the complexity of China’s situation and the inability of statistics to predict much of anything.

Rob Gifford, former Beijing correspondent for National Public Radio, took a three thousand mile-long journey along China’s Route 312, from Shanghai to …

Information On The Tibet Situation

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Many of us here at China Beat have been following very closely the story on the recent uprisings in Tibet and neighboring provinces. These are the sources we’ve been reading; if you have other recommendations for solid reporting and commentary on this developing situation, please post them in the comments section.

1. James Miles (Beijing bureau chief for the Economist and the author of The Legacy of Tiananmen: China in Disarray, on China in the aftermath of 1989) is apparently the only Western journalist who is or was in Lhasa. He’s published good reports like this one on the Economist‘s …

Blogging From The China Book Festivals

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

For the past week, all over China, writers have been bumping into each other at hotel check-ins, or at breakfast, in taxi queues. They have waved/hugged/air kissed, and asked: “Are you doing Beijing? Shanghai? Suzhou? Chengdu? Hong Kong….?” (In terms of one-upmanship a simple ‘yes’ to each can’t be beaten.)

Who’d have thought it? Book festivals – originally the cultural preserve of western cities – are popping up in several of China’s big urban centers. With one major difference, of course – they are run and largely attended by a rapidly growing population of expatriates. Much of the content is …

I Know, It’S Only Rock’N’Roll (But They Don’T Like It)

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

This posting about the politics of pop concerts in Shanghai is mostly about an American duo (Jan and Dean), whose hits included “Surf City,” and the hard-to-categorize Icelandic songstress Bjork, who last week made headlines anddrew the ire of the Chinese state by saying the words “Tibet, Tibet” after performing a song called “Declare Independence” (on the heels of which, there wasapparent tinkering with Harry Connick Jr.’s song list at a recent performance). It still seemed right, though, to give the piece a title adapted from a song by a famous British band. Why? Because the Rolling Stones, like Bjork …

This Day: March 8, International Women’S Day, Kate Merkel-Hess

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

In the wake of World War I, a spirit of international cooperation emerged. Its manifestations, such as the founding of the League of Nations, confirmed the late-nineteenth century notion that participation in the global community required national identity (in place of the local identities that historians have shown were most important in empires; rarely did regular people identify themselves as imperial subjects but rather by village or region). Educated elites in China expressed devotion to this new internationalism by reiterating to their countrymen the importance of awareness of international events, as well as by domesticating international holidays such as Arbor …

Making (Up) History

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

A few weeks ago, Kate Merkel-Hess posted a list here at China Beat of her nominations for five Chinese historical events that should get more attention. In response, Charles Hayford has written a piece at Frog In a Well about five historical events that didn’t happen. Hayford’s piece not only proposes a few likely turns of history that didn’t happen, but also debunks a few popular historical assumptions that never were.

Democracy Or Bust: Why Our Knowledge About What The Chinese Lack Is Really No Knowledge At All

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

An NPR report yesterday on the opening of a new session of the National People’s Congress in Beijing began with a disparaging comment to the effect that China is still a long way from democracy. As a statement of fact, this is no doubt both true and lamentable. As an attempt to convey useful knowledge to American listeners about China’s current situation, however, it seems to me nearly useless. Like many such statements, it is based on an implicit comparison between the Chinese political system and Western-style democracy. And like many such implicit comparisons, it falls victim to a particularly …

Tuesday Taelspin: From The Beijing Airport To The Palace Of Milk

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

In preparation for the Olympics, Beijing last week unveiled the long-anticipated Terminal 3, the mammoth new edition to the Beijing Airport. The Telegraph’sRichard Spencer blogs on his recent flight, one of the first to use the new terminal.

If you do find yourself passing through an airport in the PRC mind your in-flight reading material, as journalist Tim Johnson of China Rises found out when the customs agents at the Lhasa airport took issue with one of his recent purchasesfrom a Kathmandu bookstore.

Controlling books at an airport is one thing, managing a famously eccentric pop star is another. Songstress …

Trauma And Memory – 228 In Taiwan Today

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

This past Thursday, Taiwan commemorated the 61st anniversary of the February 28 Incident (hereafter referred to as 228), an uprising against KMT authoritarian rule initially sparked by the beating of a female vendor in Taipei for selling untaxed cigarettes. During the ensuing military crackdown, tens of thousands of Taiwan’s elite were arrested, tortured, and murdered, with the violence lasting into the spring of 1947 and helping usher in the era known as the White Terror (白色恐怖).

The untold suffering of 228 has led to decades of division in Taiwan society, because while the conflict’s victims included both Taiwanese and Mainlanders, …

Benjamin Read On Homeowners’ Protests In Shanghai

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

A lot has been written about a rise in the number of protests in China – particularly mass demonstrations and those by farmers and villagers who face government land seizures. (Historian Charles Hayford wrote an interesting essayabout the terminology journalists use to describe different classes of people in China.)

But protests from the middle class in China are also garnering increased attention from the American press. The latest protest, a January “stroll” by homeowners in Shanghai who disagreed with an extension of the city’s famous Maglev train, have been described as “the strongest sign yet of rising resentment among China’s …

In Case You Missed It: Vermeer’S Hat, David Porter

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Have you ever suspected that all this recent talk about China and globalization might be just a little belated? China historian Timothy Brook, author of the award-winning Confusions of Pleasure, reminds us in a new book that global commercial and cultural exchanges were already profoundly shaping the lives and world views of Europeans 350 years ago.

Vermeer’s Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World (Bloomsbury, 2007) offers an eye-opening and eminently readable account of how the ever-expanding circulation of goods and people from several continents began flattening the world several centuries before NAFTA and Wal-mart.

The …

China On My Mind: Ian Hacking On The 1989 Demonstrations

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

In their coverage of the 1989 student demonstrations, foreign and domestic media focused almost exclusively on the demonstrations in Beijing. However, sympathetic students and workers protested and marched across China in May and June 1989, and there has been little coverage or scholarship written about the shape and scope of those events. In the spring and early summer of 1989, professor and philosopher Ian Hacking was teaching in Wuhan and Lanzhou. In this installation of the audio feature, “China on My Mind,” China Beat contributor Tom Mullaney chats with Hacking about what he saw during this critical moment in Chinese …

Prejudice Made Plausible? Foreign Criticism And Chinese Sensitivity

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Living in Beijing as I do, it’s not uncommon to be asked about my feelings on the Olympics. Chinese friends, family, colleagues, and even complete and total strangers (for reasons passing understanding) seem interested in hearing my opinion.

But I’ve learned the hard way that my perspective per se is not what is actually being sought, but rather confirmation of what The People’s Daily and CCTV assure all Chinese is the only possible correct answer: Yes, the Olympics are going to be a huge success and will demonstrate to the world that China is becoming a modern, developed nation. Deviations …

In Case You Missed It: Nixon And Mao, Kate Merkel-Hess

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

This week marks the 36th anniversary of Richard Nixon’s visit to China, so it was serendipitous that on meandering through the public library’s history section I happened on Margaret MacMillan’s Nixon and Mao: The Week That Changed the World. Largely a play-by-play examination of the week’s events (and its larger-than-life stars in Nixon, Mao, Kissinger, and Zhou Enlai), the book is littered with fascinating anecdotes about the China Nixon and his entourage encountered: for instance, Beijingers were ordered to studiously ignore the welcoming motorcade and Chinese pilots who took over Kissinger’s plane for the Shanghai-to-Beijing leg during his 1971 prepatory …

A Coming Distraction–Rana Mitter’S Modern China: A Very Short Introduction

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

If I rode the subway to and from work, I’d be seriously addicted by now to the Oxford University Press “Very Short Introductions” series in which Rana Mitter’s next book is about to appear (it’s due out late in February in Britain, soon after that in the U.S.). This is because these slim volumes seem custom-made to be read over the course of a day-or-two’s worth of hour-there and hour-back train rides.

The best way to sum up the series is that it’s made up of little books on big topics. They are all short (100 to 150 pages of …

China Annals: Interview With Catherine Sampson

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

This week, The China Beat interviews Catherine Sampson, former BBC journalist and The Times correspondent, as well as the author of four mystery novels (see below). You can learn a lot more about her on her website, which also includes an exciting blog.

NB: What was the most intriguing, amusing, inspiring, or eye-opening story that you covered in China?

CS: I worked as a journalist in Beijing for The Times of London between 1988 and 1993. Both the most inspiring and then the most awful was 1989. The student demonstrations went on for 6 weeks and drew in all sorts …

From East To West With Grant And Li*, Jeff Wasserstrom

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

One thing that American newspaper readers can’t help noticing—no matter which section matters most to them—is that people, objects, and images are circulating between China and the West at a dizzying pace. In 2007 alone, business reporters told of tainted food and dangerous toys coming from East to West, while their colleagues covering entertainment reported that film crews were heading in the opposite direction to shoot “Survivor: China.” Sports fans got reports of U.S. athletes preparing for the Beijing Games as well as articles about Yao Ming moving back and forth across the Pacific, to shoot baskets in Houston and …

Five Chinese Historical Events That Don’T Get Much Attention, Kate Merkel-Hess

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

After Jeremiah Jenne recently posed a question about “the most important Chinese historical figure most people have never heard of,” I got to thinking about the vast expanse of Chinese history that is so often neglected in favor of the (admittedly sometimes more-relevant) post-49 events. In chronological order, here are my five nominations for Chinese historical events I wish were more often talked and written about. What events make your list?

1. The An Lushan Rebellion

Led by the rogue general, An Lushan, the civil war that riled the Tang Dynasty from 755 to 763 caused death by violence and …

Frivolous Friday: From China, To India, To Southern California

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

I live in Southern California where I always have to look my best, so I get my eyebrows threaded at Vinita’s Beauty and Threading Studio in Tustin. Vinita’s is owned and largely patronized by South Asian women. I’m frequently the only white woman in the place, but I get a sweet deal: a full eyebrow threading for only 5 minutes and 6 bucks! In case you suffer through waxing, you really need to know about the wonderful process of threading. It’s literally done with a sewing thread: the “threader” holds one end of the thread in her mouth, wraps the …

Why Was Yao Ming Fined?

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

A colleague here at the Beijing Sport University whom I have known for over ten years, Yi Jiandong (易剑东), is one of the two most vocal media commentators on Chinese sports in the academic world (along with Lu Yuanzhen 卢元镇). He has reached an exalted status that an American professor like myself can only marvel at from afar. He is one of the “Big-Name Bloggers”(名人博客) on the Qzone blogsite, where he shares space with the likes of Feng Shuyong, head coach of the national track and field team (whose main purpose seems to be to report on Liu Xiang, 2004 …

Two Good China Stories Where You Don’T Usually Look For China Stories

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

In the last few days, some good stuff to read about China has appeared in places you might not think to look. First, the Winter, 2008 Dissent has an excellent article by Thomas Pogge (pp. 66-75) called “Growth and Inequality: Understanding Recent Trends and Political Choices.” It’s an admirably clear overview of some of the vagaries of poverty statistics, differing ways of estimating inequality, and the relationship between growth and poverty reduction, tied to a very sensible argument about how somewhat slower growth could actually do much more to reduce poverty (and wreak less havoc on the environment) if it …