International Relations Commons^™

From Armchair Reading To Action: Acknowledging Our Role In The Horror Of The Democratic Republic Of The Congo - And Doing Something About It., Shareen Hertel

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Reading Adam Hochschild's extraordinary account of ordinary people caught up in the horrific ravages of a civil war raging in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), I was struck by how incongruous my own encounter with this suffering is. I read his article over lunch, safe in the comfort of my own home. As a woman, I live largely without fear of the kind of brutal sexual violence that Hochschild opens his article with, as he related the story of a Congolese NGO worker who is herself a victim of multiple rapes.

If They Just Weren't So Rich!, Anja Mihr

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The deadliest war on earth-as it is called-in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) will only end when the country's richness fades or is kept under surveillance. Human rights and peace might have a chance if Congo's lucrative diamond, gold or coltan mines were under shared control by non-profit agencies or international organizations with the intention to spread the mines' benefits and wealth among the Congolese people. Wishful thinking? Most likely it is, but what other alternative is there? The country's extraordinary wealth in natural resources is the main reason for the immense corruption, the extermination of entire villages, the …

September Roundtable: Introduction

Human Rights & Human Welfare

An annotation of:

The Rape of the Congo. By Adam Hochschild. The New York Review of Books. August 13, 2009.

Natural Resources And Wealth Of The Democratic Republic Of Congo (Drc): Of Benefit To Whom?, Nicola Colbran

Human Rights & Human Welfare

When asked to discuss the humanitarian tragedy in the DRC, the question really is where to start? The article by Adam Hochschild discusses some of the most horrific events and experiences imaginable: widespread killings of unarmed civilians, rape, torture and looting, the recruitment of child soldiers, and the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of people. The immediate human response is who is to blame, how did it happen and how can the world apparently do nothing?

Human Rights Law On Trial In The Drc, William Paul Simmons

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The ongoing tragedy in Eastern Congo contains so many tragic lessons that it should shake to their very foundations all comfortable ideologies about human rights and politics. The atrocities in the DRC should implicate all but have so far resulted in almost limitless impunity. Here, I briefly put human rights law on trial for its role in perpetuating this tragedy.

Managing A Nation's Image During Crisis: A Study Of The Chinese Government's Image Repair Efforts In The “Made In China” Controversy, Peijuan Cai, Lee Pei Ting, Augustine Pang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The image of a nation is crucial in the conduct of international relations (Wang, J. (2006). Managing national reputation and international relations in the global era: Public diplomacy revisited. Public Relations Review, 32, 91–96). A favorable image plays a critical role in asserting one's influence (Benoit, W. L., & Brinson, S. L. (1994). AT&T: “Apologies are not enough”. Communication Quarterly, 42, 75–88; Wang, J. (2006). Managing national reputation and international relations in the global era: Public diplomacy revisited. Public Relations Review, 32, 91–96). Often, strategic communication tools like public relations and media diplomacy are used to enhance a nation's image …

Obama In China: Friendly Advice, Robert A. Kapp

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

After Barack Obama’s inauguration, we ran a series at China Beat of various China experts’ reading recommendations for Obama on China (See installments I, II, III,IV, V, VI). At the time, we assumed a trip to China would be one of Obama’s top priorities–as is now clear with last week’s announcement that Obama will visit China in November 2009. So we sent out a few emails to China watchers from a variety of backgrounds, asking if they had advice for Obama as he prepares for the summit in Beijing. Here, the first installment from Robert A. Kapp, former president of …

Readings On Speech And Protest In China

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

1. Hu Jintao has made a trip to Xinjiang, his first since riots there in July. Xinjiang was in the news earlier this week as well, when international news organizations picked up a story, first reported in Monday’s China Daily, which announced that trials would begin shortly for more than 200 people arrested in connection with the riots. The regional government, however, quickly denied that any trials have been scheduled, and stated that only 83 people have been officially arrested to date. Over at the Wall Street Journal’s China blog, Sky Canaves writes on this story and what it reveals …

Reports On China Environment

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The Wilson Center’s China Environment Forum has released two new research briefs, adding them to their growing archive of reports on issues ranging fromhealth challenges in Xinjiang to waste disposal in rural areas. Particularly notable is the collection of reports resulting from a collaboration with Western Kentucky University; the two newest reports are both part of this series.

The first report is “Electric Cars: The Drive for a Sustainable Solution in China,” by Peter Marsters:

The CEO of Chinese automaker BYD has recently taken to drinking vials of his company’s battery fluid. The fluid, designed for use in electric cars, …

Tales From Taiwan: Mourning, Paul Katz

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Siaolin’s survivors are in the midst of grappling with three main issues: mourning the dead, coping with current difficulties, and planning for the future (see the online chats about these issues on Siaolin’s own website, the 甲仙鄉小林社區入口網). On August 21, I attended two meetings with Professor Chien Wen-min 簡文敏 and his colleagues (林清財, 吳旭峰, 段洪坤, 張東炯, 黃智慧, 潘英海, 簡炯仁, 謝世憲). The first meeting focused on the needs of Siaolin’s villagers, who were preparing a petition to present to President Ma when he attended mourning rituals the next day. Consensus was reached on three main points, namely requesting the government allow …

Nimby Comes To China Revisited

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Many things have happened in the PRC this year that echo phenomena discussed in China in 2008: A Year of Great Significance, including the recent renewal of Shanghai protests relating to train lines. As Associated Press reporter Elaine Kurtenbach notes in her valuable dispatch on the subject, the latest demonstrations have been on a smaller scale than the early 2008 ones discussed in our book. They have also been directed toward a more convetional kind of railway (albeit one that moves very fast) rather than a Magnetic levitation (Maglev) one.

Nevertheless, Kurtenbach’s summary of the situation (in this case regarding …

Resource: Images Of 1972 China

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

I received a note on the H-Asia listserv last week from the Asian Studies WWW Monitor (which provides regular summaries of online teaching resources on Asia). The note flagged a fabulous archive of photographs of daily life taken by Wellesley Political Science Professor William A. Joseph in 1972. Below, a few images from this intriguing resource.

Better City, Better Life, Anna Greenspan

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Since in Shanghai Expo preparation is now ubiquitous, and because I share China’s love of numbered lists, here are my top 8 suggestions for how Shanghai could implement its promise–now posted everywhere–of a ‘better city, better life.’

I’ve deliberately not included things that are a) already underway (e.g. more subway stops), b) up to the whim of a single entrepreneur (e.g. a decent bagel shop) and c) too obviously political (e.g. a more open media).

As those of us who love the city know, there is much that Shanghai–with its safe, pedestrian friendly, tree lined streets and spectacular skyline–gets right. …

Readings: Expo Preparation, Food, Music, And Fashion

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

A variety of readings that piqued our interest this week:

1. In a New York Times story, Howard French takes a look at the ongoing preparations in Shanghai as next year’s World Expo grows closer. In addition to Expo-related construction in the city center, French notes, attention is also being paid to outlying neighborhoods, which are being spruced up in anticipation that some Expo-goers will want to explore Shanghai’s innumerable side streets and alleyways:

Shiny new aluminum facades are being hastily stapled onto grubby family storefronts, and fresh coats of paint and mortar are being applied, often for the first …

Siaolin Stands Up

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Bouncing over ruined roads washed out by Typhoon Morakot (some roadbeds have been transformed into river beds), a group of scholars (including myself) drove to the township of Chia-hsien 甲仙 (Kaohsiung County) on August 18 to attend a press conference marking the formation of the Reconstruction Committee for Siaolin’s Plains Aborigine Culture (小林平埔文化重建委員會). Arriving in Chia-hsien, one is soon struck by the roar of helicopters and generators, as well as the smell of flood debris and betel nut juice, which serve to cover up other odors. Power has been restored, but there is still no running water, which puts a …

Readings On Liu Xiaobo And Xu Zhiyong

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

News came today that legal scholar Xu Zhiyong was formally arrested last week, though he has not yet been charged, according to his lawyer (see recent China Beat posts on Xu Zhiyong here and here). Xu is one of several detainees whom netizens are seeking to free through a postcard campaign; another is Charter ’08 organizer Liu Xiaobo, who has been in custody since last December. Here are several readings related to Liu, and one on Xu, that have caught our attention:

1. Before Charter ’08, Liu Xiaobo was already well-known as a participant in the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations. …

Readings

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

There are several recent pieces on China’s internet controls that are worth reading if you haven’t already looked at them. First, “How China Polices the Internet” atFinancial Times, gives an interesting account of what David Bandurski has called China’s “Control 2.0,” an increasingly adept deployment of online discourse on behalf (rather than at the expense) of the government. After vigorous online debate emerged over a Yunanese man’s suspicious death while in police custody, officials did not just cut off discussion:

Wu Hao, deputy propaganda chief for the area, put out an online appeal for “netizens” to help investigate the case. …

Fell Rains

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The people of southern Taiwan are suffering the ravages of the worst flooding to hit the island in 50 years. This tragedy was brought about by Typhoon Morakot, which combined with a tropical depression near the Philippines to produce a blob of tropical moisture nearly 1,000 kilometers in diameter that dumped between 6-7 FEET of rain on Taiwan’s southern regions from August 7-9, 2009, with the most severe rainfall occurring on August 8 (Taiwanese Father’s Day or 八八(爸爸)節). The resulting floodwaters and mudslides have toppled buildings and buried entire villages. Current casualty figures stand at 103 dead and 45 injured, …

China’S Migrant Workers In The Wake Of The Economic Crisis: Unemployed, Undeterred, Robert D. O'Brien

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

After growing at double-digit rates for most of the last three decades, the Chinese economy is now in jeopardy of failing to achieve the eight percent GDP expansion benchmark widely considered necessary for the government to stave off social unrest. Although a fairly insulated and underdeveloped financial market allowed the PRC to avoid the first order effects of the global financial crisis, the drying up of China’s main export markets – the U.S., Europe, and Japan – has wreaked havoc on the manufacturing sector, leading to the unemployment of over 20 million migrant workers.

In the wake of the recent …

Rolling The Dice In Macau, Dustin Wright

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

It has been almost a decade now since China regained control of Macau, but the city’s present and future crops up in news coverage much less than Hong Kong, another reclaimed colony. We’re delighted, then, to be able to run this piece about Macau from someone who has been spending time there, meditating on not only whether or not Macau is democratizing but also how Macau’s relationship to the mainland and the world is changing its economy and society. For those interested in background information on Macau, see the reading list that follows the piece.

Sitting in a hip dessert …

On The Web: Images Of China

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

China Beat readers looking for cool “new” desktop pictures for their computers might want to think old. More and more archives are digitalizing their collections of photographs and making them available online, so now finding that perfect snapshot of Old Beijing or the Great Wall couldn’t be easier. Here are just a couple of the many websites out there, and some sample photos that we found by searching for topics like “Shanghai” and “China.”

1. Friend of the blog Jeremy Friedlein (Program Director, CET Shanghai) pointed us to Life magazine photos available on Google Images. Adding “source:life” in the search …

China Behind The Headlines: Xu Zhiyong, Susan Jakes

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Earlier this year, a graduate of his country’s most prestigious law school with an impressive record of public service, a comfortable academic post at a major university, and a political office he’d won in a trailblazing election summarized his life’s mission for a local newspaper. “I strive to be a worthy citizen, a member of a group of people who promote the progress of the nation,” he told the reporter. “I want to make people believe in ideals and in justice and help them see that there is hope for change.”

Like a more well-known community organizer, Xu Zhiyong has …

Filthy Fiction: The Writings Of Zhu Wen, Julia Lovell

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Chinese fiction of the 1990s was not short on shock value. If we think of the decade’s cultural tone being set by Deng Xiaoping’s 1992 command to unleash commercial forces, then the years that followed proved rich in works that would have done the old man proud. Quick off the mark was Jia Pingwa, who triumphantly became one of the earliest, most notorious cases of a serious writer surrendering to lurid populism, with his 1993 novel, The Ruined Capital (Feidu): a best-selling, soft-pornographic tale of a male writer’s travails through the corruption of contemporary China. Things were not looking much …

In Case You Missed It: Cambridge Companion To Modern Chinese Culture, Miri Kim

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

For scholars of China who are interested in modernity, the looming question seems to be, is ‘modernity’ a valid and useful analytical category for describing, explaining, and understanding China? And if so, how should modernity and its attendant conceptual apparatuses be deployed in investigations of China’s various aspects, historical, political, cultural, and so on? In The Cambridge Companion to Modern Chinese Culture, editor Kam Louie and a distinguished list of contributors seek to explore China within its particular modern contexts and clarify the idea of ‘modernity’ by using historical and contemporary cases.

In his introduction Louie writes, “At first glance, …

Readings For August 3

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

1. An important story emerged this weekend in the blogosphere: Chinese legal scholar Xu Zhiyong was taken from his home by police last Wednesday and has not been seen since. From Evan Osnos at The New Yorker:

Xu might not have reached Marshall status yet, but he is as close as China gets to a public-interest icon. He teaches law at the Beijing University of Post and Telecommunications. He has also run the Open Constitution Initiative, a legal aid and research organization that worked on many of China’s path-breaking cases. He and his colleagues had investigated the Sanlu milk scandal, …

A Few Reading Recommendations

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

1. The new Journal of Current Chinese Affairs is out—and all its articles are available for free in PDF at its website. Those of possible interest to CB readers include:

“Beijing Bubble, Beijing Bust: Inequality, Trade, and Capital Inflow into China” (by James K. Galbraith, Sara Hsu, Wenjie Zhang); “Realpolitik Dynamics and Image Construction in the Russia-China Relationship: Forging a Strategic Partnership?” (by Maria Raquel Freire, Carmen Amado Mendes); “The Regulation of Religious Affairs in Taiwan: From State Control to Laisser-faire?” (by André Laliberté); “Nationalism to Go – Coke Commercials between Lifestyle and Political Myth” (available only in German, by …

The Urumchi Unrest Revisited, James Millward

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The violence in Xinjiang took place almost a month ago, but it continues to generate interesting commentary (see, for example, this thoughtful essay by Pallavi Aiyar). The early July events have also recently had two reverberations in Australia, as Jia Zhangke and two other Chinese filmmakers pulled out of a Melbourne film festival where a documentary expected to present a sympathetic view of one of the people Beijing blames for the unrest was to be shown, and then hackers attacked the festival’s website to protest that film’s inclusion in the line-up. In light of this, we asked James Millward, a …

Race And Espionage, Sam Goffman

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The fact that China and the US spy on each other should come as no surprise to anybody. Each country is nervous about the other, and espionage, though it is surely not conducted with the same vigor as during the Cold War, is still an important part of interactions between states.

What’s interesting about Chinese espionage operations in the US, however, is that they appear to involve strong racial and nationalist overtones. The Soviet Union tended to appeal to ideology, or simply offer money or other types of benefits to its agents; China, it seems, is mainly going after overseas …

Brought To You By The People’S Republic Of The Onion, Haiyan Lee

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

America’s finest news source The Onion has a new owner! Since last week, readers have been bombarded with the good tiding, from the modified masthead, logo, and tagline, to news headlines, editorials, audio and video clips, and ads, lots of ads. The new owner goes by the appetizing name of Yu Wan Mei 鱼完美 Amalgamated Salvage Fisheries and Polymer Injection Group, supposedly a Chinese conglomerate from the inland province of Sichuan. The corporation specializes in fish by-products salvaged from the “ocean’s bounty.” Some of its finer samples are “Broiled Shark Gums,” “Multi-Flavor Variety Pack Of Pickled Fish Cloaca,” “Lightning Power …

A Reader: The 2010 Asian Games

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The PR folks for the 2010 Asian Games in Guangzhou have added China Beat to their mailing list, so we got their note this week about organizers’ plans to seed clouds to prevent rain during the Games. Our interest was piqued–we hadn’t heard much yet about the 2010 Asian Games. Here are a few of the things we found when we went looking…

1. As with the Olympic preparations in Beijing, there is massive construction, investment, and environmental management (not just cloud-seeding) underway in Guangzhou, according to Xinhua:

Authorities are pumping in more than 58 billion yuan (8.5 billion U.S. …