Asian Studies Commons^™

Susan Brownell Around The World

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

China Beat contributor Susan Brownell is showing up all over the web these days, as her special knowledge on Olympic and Chinese sports history is in high demand. Here is a list of some of her recent media appearances:

1. On PRI’s “The World,” Brownell talks about some of the differences between Western and Chinese notions of body and sports; the report also includes a short excerpt from Jonathan Spence’s Reith Lecture “The Body Beautiful,” which Xu Guoqi blogged about at China Beat earlier this month.

2. Brownell has also been cited in several NPR reports, including these two by …

Securing The Olympics, Eric Setzekorn

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

More than any state-of-the-art sports complex or amazing athletic performance, many visitors will remember the Beijing Olympics as the world’s largest security event. In an effort to squelch any sort of protest or more serious terrorist act the government has instituted strict new rules and enforced many existing but hitherto disregarded laws. Estimates of total security personnel range from 250,000 to 500,000, depending on the criteria, but visitors should be either alarmed or comforted to know their every action is monitored and scrutinized.

The epicenter for Olympic security is Tiananmen Square. Since 1989 and even more so since the Falun …

A Defense Of Jiang Rong’S Wolf Totem, Timothy Weston

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

I have a confession to make: I was moved by Jiang Rong’s Wolf Totem, think it’s an important novel and that it’s well worth reading. The reason I say I feel a need to “confess” as opposed to just being able to state this is because recent postingson The China Beat, as well as some of the reviews referenced in those postings, attack the book with a sharpness and thoroughgoingness that initially made me question my own taste and to think that I was politically incorrect for liking and being impressed by the novel as I read it. But after …

What We’Re Reading Today

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

There are a few themes we’ve been tracking lately at China Beat, including growing Chinese nationalism, middle class protest, and India-China comparisons. Here are a few stories we’ve noticed around the web this week that address some of these issues:

1. For a thoughtful take on the fenqing phenomenon, check out Evan Osnos’s recent New Yorker piece, “Angry Youth: The New Generation’s Neocon Nationalists.”

2. Financial Times ran a recent piece on the efforts to stop construction of a nuclear power station in Rushan (southeast of Beijing)–see “China Pressure Groups Learn to Tread Carefully.”

3. Earlier this week, Danwei.org ran …

Rocking Beijing, Eric Setzekorn

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Like almost every aspect of Beijing life in the past five years, the live music scene has undergone rapid but uneven development. Beijing has always prided itself on the gritty originality of its live music compared to the dominance of cover bands in Shanghai or the saccharine Canto-pop of Hong Kong. The recent opening of new, modern venues on both sides of the city has allowed dozens of new bands and a newly affluent urban youth to establish a flourishing but still shallow live music scene.

For live music, particularly rock and hip hop music, the Olympics are bringing challenges …

Beijing’S New Flame, Rob Gifford

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The essence of Beijing has always been found in its buildings. The city has no major river, no coastline. There are some hills to the west and the north, with the Great Wall stretched across them, but there is none of the geographic razzle-dazzle that created towns like Hong Kong or San Francisco or Sydney or Istanbul. As the historian Arnold Toynbee noted when he visited in the 1930s, Beijing as a city owes little to nature and everything to art.

The art of which Toynbee wrote was contained within the ancient walls of the Forbidden City, where the emperor …

Faq #6: Are The Beijing Olympic Games Being Used As A Propaganda Campaign To Prop Up The Communist Party?

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

“Olympic education” is the IOC’s label for the educational efforts that are supposed to be an integral part of the Olympic Movement as required by Fundamental Principle #1 of the Olympic Charter, which states that Olympism is a philosophy of life that blends sport with culture and education. Since 2005 Chinahas been carrying out the largest-scale “Olympic education” campaign in history.There have been academic and professional conferences, textbooks and courses for public schools and universities, educational television and radio shows, magazine and newspaper essays, websites, and more.

In fall of 2007 I was added to the “experts team” of Beijing …

China Around The World: Australia, Rowan Callick

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

It’s hard for me to compare how Australians and others cover China, in part because we rarely actually meet each other to swap notes, except for the occasional encounter via the Foreign Correspondents Club of China (an admirable organization, but one without formal standing in China because it lacks—for obvious reasons on both sides—the sponsorship of a party or government body) and in part because the whole structure of journalism in China does not bring reporters together frequently, as it does in most other countries.

I sometimes go for weeks without encountering another journalist. For China has few press conferences, …

Duelling Dreams At The 2008 Beijing Olympics, James Leibold

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

This year is China’s year. On the 8th day of the 8th month at 8pm, it will light the flame of the 29th Olympics Games—bringing not only the world’s athletes to Beijing but also thousands of foreign visitors and millions more through the massive global media contingency that will descend on the capital.

What will the media spotlight capture? The luster of an ancient civilization and emerging superpower as many in China hope; or the darker, seedier corners of an authoritarian yet fragile party-state as many in the West suspect.

According to the Chinese government, the Olympics games have never …

Kung Fu Panda, Go Home!, Haiyan Lee

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

It seems that boycott fatigue has finally hit the Chinese, in a year that has lurched from one boycott to another—against such entities as a French supermarket chain, a Hollywood star, and an American cable channel. When the latest clarion call was issued by a performance artist named Zhao Bandi赵半狄 against Kung Fu Panda, he was greeted with jeers and mockery. Zhao presented his case in a blog: Hollywood is morally corrupt for churning out loathsome personalities like Sharon Stone (who betrayed schadenfreude over the Sichuan earthquake as “karmic retribution” for Tibet) and Steven Spielberg (who quit his role as …

Things We’D Rather You Not Say On The Web, Or Anywhere Else, David Bandurski

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

I love words. And I thank you in advance, dear citizens, for obeying mine. Words are dangerous and slippery things. Some people in the West will tell you that words are playthings, and that we should all be free to do with them as we please. But I want to tell you that words are really all we have – and this is why the Party has troubled itself to choose them so carefully on your behalf.

You will have heard, I suppose, that Article 35 of our nation’s constitution guarantees that you enjoy “freedom of expression.” You will no …

From Lovers To Volunteers: Tian Han And The National Anthem, Liang Luo

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

As the clock counts down towards the opening of the Olympic Games at 8 p.m. on August 8, 2008, the Chinese government and many ordinary Chinese citizens are hoping that one particular song will make an impression on television viewers in all corners of the globe: “March of the Volunteers,” the country’s National Anthem. Not only will it play during the Opening Ceremony and the Closing Ceremony, but also every time a Chinese athlete wins a gold medal, and expectations are running high that this will happen a lot, thanks largely to the high caliber of the women competing for …

Olympic Readings

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

For those keeping up on coverage of the Olympics and China, the new issue ofForeign Policy has a piece by John Hoberman, professor of German Studies at UT-Austin. In FP’s regular “Think Again” feature (which seeks to challenge conventional wisdom), Hoberman argues that the Olympics are political, are not intended to promote human rights, are not (necessarily) a catalyst for change, don’t generate a lot of revenue for the host or sponsors, are not the most controversial Games ever, and that the IOC is even more corrupt than already reported. In an additional piece, “Prime Numbers: Rings of Gold,” Brad …

Bourgeois Shanghai: Wang Anyi’S Novel Of Nostalgia, Wittenberg University

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

After the recent publication of a translation of Wang Anyi’s 1995 novel A Song of Everlasting Sorrow, we asked Howard Choy to reflect on the novel’s contents and importance. Below, Choy draws on his recently published work on late twentieth century Chinese fiction to contextualize Wang’s Shanghai story.

Among all the major cities in China, Shanghai has become the most popular in recent academic research and creative writings. This is partly a consequence of its resuscitation under Deng Xiaoping’s (1904-1997) intensified economic reforms in the 1990s, and partly due to its unique experience during one hundred years (1843-1943) of colonization …

China Images From The Library Of Congress

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

For those always on the lookout for more teaching images, you may be interested in taking a gander at the Library of Congress’s Flickr account. Though mainly featuring images of the United States (altogether about 4,000 images), if you search “China” at the top of the page you will receive several pages of images from or about China. (You can easily download the images to your computer by clicking on the photo, then selecting “all sizes,” then selecting “download the original size.”) These fascinating images include the photos below, taken between 1910 and 1915. The first is a photograph of …

After The Olympics, What?, Nicolai Volland

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Exactly one month before the opening of the Beijing Olympic Games, all attention seems to be focused on those magic sixteen days, from August 8 through August 24. It is surprising, however, how rarely the question is raised: what will happen once the Games are over?

In the run-up to the Summer Games, China has been placed under an undeclared state of emergency. Special regulations and restrictions are effecting almost every of daily life. Taxi drivers and Beijing residents had to brush up their English and study brochures that explained how to stand in line and be courteous to foreigners. …

Out And About

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

It’s been a while since we’ve done a reading round-up–here a few things we’ve been reading (and writing) on the web lately:

1. If you’ve been picking up rumblings about “soy sauce” and “push ups” and haven’t been able to sort out the details, the always savvy Sky Canaves (with Juliet Ye this time) at Wall Street Journal‘s China Blog sorts it out for you. Check out Time‘s report for the basics. As CDT reports, debates over the Wengan riots have turned to the topic of internet censorship, while EastSouthWestNorth notesthat discussions of the incident are cooling down.

2. Looking …

Service Encounters, Maura Elizabeth Cunningham

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The action in Amy Hanser’s Service Encounters (Stanford University Press, 2008) moves smoothly among three separate but related urban consumer settings in Harbin: the Mao-era relic of Harbin No. X department store, Sunshine Department Store, a swanky oversized shrine to the new conspicuous consumption of wealthy Chinese, and the chaotic marketplace of The Underground, where young women will literally sell the shirts off their backs when presented with the opportunity. Hanser, an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of British Columbia, focuses on these three sites as she examines the shifts that have taken place in Chinese retail practices …

Faq#5: Why Can’T The Chinese Authorities Allow A Little Space For Protests During The Olympics?

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Of course, the easy answer to this question is: Because there is almost no freedom of assembly in China and there are big restrictions on freedom of expression. But I have started to realize that this answer is too simple. The people I have been talking to, even well-educated and international people, have a gut reaction to the idea of public protests that is unfavorable.

I have been discussing the issue of protests during the Olympic Games with Chinese colleagues, friends, and acquaintances from academic, government, and corporate backgrounds. The people whose views I summarize here are college-educated (in China), …

Faq#4: How Is Beijing Planning To Handle Political Protests During The Olympic Games?

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

One of the most important issues for the upcoming Beijing Olympics is whether activists will attempt to carry out public protests and demonstrations, and how the Chinese authorities will react if they do. Some Western journalists believe that there will be protest attempts, and if the Chinese reaction is to immediately send in the security forces, this will dominate the front-page coverage of the Games. One journalist acquaintance observed that if this should happen, it is likely that a photo of a policeman manhandling a protester will become the graphic emblem of the Games for years to come, carrying on …

The Body Beautiful: Jonathan Spence’S Final Reith Lecture, Xu Guoqi

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Jonathan Spence gave his fourth and last Reith lecture on “The Body Beautiful.” This is a perfect fit for China’s Olympic year and a wonderful conclusion talk after his first lecture on mind (“Confucian Ways”), then on Chinese interactions with the former superpower (the second lecture “English Lessons”), and the current one (the third lecture “American Dreams”). From mind to body, from China as an ancient civilization through its turbulent relations with Western powers to a nation which is determined to compete with the world in hard power either economically or physically, the topic was extremely well thought. The lecture …

Our Women In China

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Since late 2006, James Fallows has been providing regular coverage on China forThe Atlantic Monthly. His first piece for the magazine was subtitled “Our Man in Shanghai…” and the retro phrase caught our eye not only for its imperial overtones (the frequency with which it is used to describe newspaper reporters is unnerving, since the phrase calls up Graham Greene’s title, Our Man in Havana, a book about nothing so much as bad intelligence), but also for its gender implications. After all, “our man in China” is just as often a woman (as has been the case in the past; …

Boss Hu And The Press, Nicolai Volland

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

In early May, we published the first installment of our feature, “China Around the World.” We asked scholars, journalists, and graduate students working outside China and the US to reflect on Chinese media and coverage of China. This reflection on the implications of Hu Jintao’s recent visit to the People’s Dailynewsroom is from Nicolai Volland, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chinese Studies at the National University of Singapore.

One June 20, Hu Jintao paid a high profile visit to the People’s Daily. His foray to the editorial offices of the CCP mouthpiece was first announced in the form …

China Around The World: Brazil, Yong Chen

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

China Beat occasionally reposts material that contributors have prepared and published in other venues. Below, Yong Chen has provided the transcript of an interview with a Brazilian paper.

The recent earthquake in Sichuan Province that devastated Wenchuan and the surrounding areas has generated much sympathy from people all over the world. They are also concerned about the broader impact on China, especially its economy and the upcoming Olympic games. Recently, I was recently interviewed by Correio Braziliense, the most important and influential in Brasilia. The interview questions exemplify such concerns and the global attention to China’s future development.

Q: Your …

Wei Cheng: From An Elite Novel To A Popular Metaphor, Xi Shi

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

China Beat is a global operation (with posts being written thus far everywhere from Beijing to Boston, Colorado to Cambodia) but it is edited at the University of California, Irvine, and more than a few CB pieces have grown out of casual conversations held on this campus. This post, for example, began when one of us mentioned to Xia Shi, who moved here from Beijing last year to do graduate work in history, that an interesting essay on the novel Fortress Besieged had appeared in the June 12 issue of the New York Review of Books (alas, only a teaser …

Finding Trust Online: Tigergate To The Sichuan Earthquakes, Guobing Yang

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

On December 15, 2007, China Digital Times posted a story about last year’s “Tigergate incident.” Titled “The Truth is More Endangered than Tigers in China,” the story begins:

The “South China Tiger” [华南虎］saga continues. Now known as “Tigergate” among Chinese netizens, this event will no doubt be one of the top media/internet stories of 2007. On December 2nd, NetEase (one of China’s leading news portals) published all 40 digital photos that farmer Zhou Zhenglong alleged he took of the tiger and also published six independent experts’ evaluations of the authenticity of these photos. These six independent third party evaluations include …

Jonathan Spence’S Yale Lectures: A Memoir, Susan Jakes

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

I first heard Jonathan Spence give a lecture thirty minutes or so after the first time I heard his name. It was the beginning of my fourth semester at Yale in 1995 during the chaotic week known on campus as “shopping period,” when students are allowed to attend any classes they choose. My roommate had announced that she was going to “shop Spence” and invited me to join her. Fortunately, she wasn’t too aghast to bring me along after I’d replied, “Sure, I’ll come with you, but what’s Spence?”

I don’t remember precisely how she answered, but whatever she said …

Ping Pong Diplomacy Revisited, Xu Guoqi

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

2008 is China’s Olympic year, which means that the world is watching that country through the lens of both sports and politics. However, this is not the first time China has attracted global attention because of sports. The 1971-1972 Ping Pong diplomacy that Mao Zedong played with the Americans had more serious consequences than this year’s Beijing Olympic Games, since the result of the Ping Pong friendship games fundamentally changed the international political scene and reshaped the world order.

Thirty-eight years later, however, when the Richard M. Nixon Presidential Librarycelebrated the historical moment earlier this month by hosting an event …

Jonathan Spence’S Third Reith Lecture: Dreams, Paradoxes, And The Uses Of History, Charles W. Hayford

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

In the third lecture of the Chinese Vistas series, “American Dreams,” Jonathan Spence talked about American dreams of China and, more tantalizing, Chinese dreams of America. He sees a series of “paradoxes” from the American Revolution to the present which set Chinese and American dreams at odds.

In the question period, another paradox emerged, one between different uses of history. The lecture was broadcast from the Asia Society on Park Avenue in New York, where the initial questions came from Richard Holbrooke, President of the Asia Society and heavyweight diplomat, and Henry Kissinger, an even heavier weight (Spence had written …

The Return Of The Two Nationalisms

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

One fascinating aspect of the KMT’s regaining political dominance in Taiwan is the reappearance of two forms of nationalism that have been central to that party’s political ideology, namely Greater China (大中華) and anti-Japanese resistance (抗日). Both have enjoyed a certain degree of legitimacy in the context of modern Chinese history, yet each carries its own risks as well.

The theme of Greater China found clear expression in President Ma Ying-jeou 馬英九’s inaugural address, which emphasized the idea that the residents of both China and Taiwan were part of a greater ”Chinese nation” (中華民族). It also seemed significant that Ma …