China took up the discourses and agenda of creative industries increasingly in the first post-millennium decade. Amidst the attempt to turn from ‘made in China’ to ‘created in China’, would the translation of the creativity discourse usher in a better society in China? This article serves as one of the probing steps to ascertain what creativity enables and disables in China. I do so in an inquiry that departs from existing scholarship on two aspects. First, it follows a regional, cross-border labour flow. Second, it focuses on the people in the frontline of creative work. My study draws on the experiences of 12 Hong Kong creative workers who moved to Shanghai and Beijing. Their translocal and transcultural encounters allowed me to trace and foreground the particularities of creative practices in China. Like many fellow creative workers, my informants moved north to pursue better career opportunities. But they also wanted to do something more. Some of them managed to do so. At the same time, their stories were punctuated with disappointments, frustrations and continuous adjustments, categorized into what I call the precarious and the ethical. The findings of this inquiry pose questions on the hypothesis, the hype and the hope of creativity in China.
This article suggests that Chinese NGOs do not have the conviction that they are part of an epistemic community in mainland China. Interviews conducted in four cities, Chongqing, Kunming, Nanjing and Shanghai, suggest that this can be attributed to a lack of set standards and professionalization governing their sector of operation. Further, the study finds that Chinese NGOs do not see knowledge production as their primary role within their organizational development life cycle. This may indicate a varying path towards the maturation of civil society in China, whereby Chinese NGOs do not conform to the organizational development process as outlined in extant NGO literature.
The majority of Anglophone literature tends to portray Confucius Institutes as playing a successful role serving China’s interests in its foreign collaborations. So far, the threat of this institution has been largely stereotyped and even taken for granted. Few scholars question the influence and capacity of the institution on both global and local scales. Relying on cartograms, correlation and national image analyses as well as qualitative studies, this article examines the influence of Confucius Institutes as the institution globalized and localized. This article reports three main findings: (1) the geopolitical influence of Confucius Institutes is uneven in different regions and they are engaged in an ongoing process of geopolitical construction; (2) analyses of correlation with China’s national image show that not only does the influence of the institution vary in regions but also that the project could have a negative impact on bilateral cooperation, suggesting that, contrary to popular thinking, Confucius Institutes have not had a positive impact on China’s global interests; and (3) the capacity of the institutes in everyday operations is systematically limited, reflecting China’s inexperience in managing this global cultural network. Confucius Institutes are generous in making economic concessions but are hesitant during political negotiations, which can be said to mirror China’s patchy performance in economic and political reform.
This article examines the role played by the political indoctrination of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) during China’s socio-economic reforms of 1987–2007. This period was a time of political transition during which the Chinese Communist Party transformed its ideology from a focus on revolution to a self-proclaimed unrivalled single-party regime. This article looks at how the party conveyed this ideological change to the armed forces. One of the four PLA general headquarters/departments, the General Political Department (中国人民解放军总政治部), was responsible for the indoctrination of servicemen and -women. Examining the work of this agency over the 20 years following its major ideological effort in 1987, this article challenges the dominant literature according to which political indoctrination hinders military professionalization. The crux of this argument is that the General Political Department’s purpose behind indoctrination of the armed forces was not only to assert party control but also to build esprit de corps. Based on a series of previously untapped periodicals published by the PLA’s General Political Department, this analysis contributes to understanding processes of authoritarian resilience in the contemporary Chinese state.
The Senkaku Shoto/Diaoyu Islands dispute in the East China Sea and the Okinotorishima dispute in the western Pacific are currently among the most prominent maritime disagreements between Japan and China. Both disputes are influenced by neorealist strategic and material interests in relation to sea lines of communication, the demarcation of maritime territory, exclusive economic zones (EEZs), and continental shelf claims. Despite material similarities, it is the issue of the rightful ownership of the historically sensitive Senkaku Shoto/Diaoyu Islands that has seriously strained bilateral relations. The way that the disagreements manifest themselves arguably reflects the central role that such liberal and constructivist themes as emotion, identity, nationalism, and domestic politics play in the dispute. The Senkaku Shoto/Diaoyu Islands dispute in particular is one where domestic politics and ideational influences play a disproportionately strong role in escalating tensions and complicating attempts at resolution. This article aims to examine the shared and contrasting ideational and material aspects of these two disputes, and to show how these interests shape Japan’s and China’s respective approaches in both cases. It thus sheds some light on when and why Sino-Japanese ideational and material interests intersect and how they affect bilateral relations.
John Mearsheimer has compared China’s attitude towards the South China Sea to the Monroe Doctrine of the United States. Mearsheimer does not accord international law much weight and certainly does not regard it as determinative of political outcomes. But many observers of China’s disputes in the South China Sea look to international law for rules and processes that could facilitate peaceful resolution of the disputes. In doing so they are variously puzzled, bemused, and/or angered by China’s assertion of the nine-dash line (南海九段线). This article draws more broadly on the literature on the Monroe Doctrine, viewing the doctrine as: a unilateral pronouncement of foreign policy; representing resistance; embedded in domestic as opposed to international law; and an assertion of legitimate regional hegemony. Through applying the analogy of the Monroe Doctrine, the article seeks fresh insights into China’s legal position in relation to the South China Sea and into the significance of the nine-dash line in terms of international law.
This article examines discourses around China’s maritime disputes. It adopts an English School approach to international order, making use of institutions governing relations between states which are themselves discursive in nature. The article argues that discourse is a particularly important factor in maritime disputes given the ambiguities resulting from historical and ongoing changes in conceptions of maritime space and sovereignty. Further, although these changes have led the institution of international law to play a growing role in questions of maritime sovereignty and jurisdiction, the article argues that the application of these legal frameworks is itself partly discursive and creates ambiguities which inform maritime disputes between key states in East Asia. The article then considers an example of discursive contestation by examining the use of freedom of navigation in the positions taken and practised by the United States and their role in US–China maritime dynamics. It concludes by suggesting that contested discourses around maritime disputes in East Asia are best understood as part of an ongoing and dynamic process of the renegotiation of regional and international order in East Asia.
For more than two decades, under the imperative of ‘developing the country at all costs’, local governments in China have allowed developers and industrialists to set up polluting industries which have had deleterious effects on citizens’ health and the natural environment. However, China appears to have entered a new phase of determined and concerted efforts on the part of both the authorities and the public to tackle environmental problems. The articles in this special issue of China Information examine the main strengths and weaknesses of China’s current system of environmental governance. The central questions linking the case studies reported here are concerned with whether and how environmental policies formulated at the central level are implemented at the local level and how different agents and interests, making use of the available legislative means, influence this implementation process. Engaging a range of political, economic, social and cultural perspectives, the five contributions in this collection concentrate on two broad issues: resolution mechanisms for public participation in environmental governance and the actual enforcement of environmental regulations.
This article traces the institutional development of environmental regulation in urban China, using data from three rounds of surveys of enforcement officials in the Guangzhou Environmental Protection Bureau in 2000, 2006 and 2013. We found that the changes to institutional contexts of regulatory control appear mainly in the fluctuating degree of support from various non-state actors, but not from government entities and regulated industries. While we detected visible organizational changes in local environmental enforcement bureaus, there was also organizational stability. First, the quality of enforcement officials has improved, as reflected by a higher level of education, first from 2000–2006 and then from 2006–2013. Second, the perceived value of enforcement officials in environmental protection was considerably enhanced in the period 2000–2006, and then remained stable from 2006 to 2013. Third, enforcement obstacles in terms of administrative ambiguity remained virtually unchanged from 2000 to 2013, while enforcement power deficit, resource scarcity and procedural ambiguity became more severe. Overall, the general perception of enforcement effectiveness at both the unit and organizational levels has remained the same over the past 13 years, whereas individual-level enforcement was perceived to have become more effective (with significant changes mainly taking place from 2006 to 2013). On the basis of these empirical results, we found that the institutional conditions for stricter enforcement in Guangzhou were visibly improved from 2000 to 2006, but only modestly improved between 2006 and 2013.
In the last five years China has passed new regulations and formulated new policies to target urban smog. Accordingly, several cities have sought to improve their public transportation systems to reduce the number of motor vehicles on the streets. In 2011 in Nanjing, during the construction of Line No. 3 of the subway system, several long-standing London plane trees in the city’s historical area were targeted for transplantation. This article focuses on the tree-hugging protest which was triggered by this event in 2011–12. While protesters framed their actions as tree protection and heritage conservation, this article is particularly interested in participatory approaches available to protesters, in light of certain recent developments in the environmental regulatory framework in China. Specifically, this article analyses a relatively new and less well-known tool for popular participation known as ‘green assessment’.
Protests in post-Mao China not only indicate citizens’ increasing dissatisfaction but also challenge the regime to act and take appropriate measures. This article discusses local government response to environmental activism within China’s decentralized political structure. Anti-incinerator protests in Beijing and Guangzhou are used to illustrate the emergence of public participation in municipal policymaking on waste management. The Beijing and Guangzhou governments’ different attitudes and responses to citizens’ grievances are analysed, particularly in light of a new public-consultative waste management mechanism implemented in Guangzhou, the Guangzhou Public Consultation and Supervision Committee for Urban Waste Management (广州市城市弃物处理公众咨询监督委员会). Changes in policies on waste management and disposal are examined through documentary analysis and in-depth interviews with stakeholders involved in anti-incinerator protests. The main goal here is to demonstrate that policy change is not only determined by protest outcomes, but that it is also greatly affected by the responses of local governments and actors within a framework of advocacy coalition. This study throws new light on Chinese policymaking on environmental issues and it re-appraises studies of environmental management in China.
This article, in a study of amoral cost–benefit analysis, legitimacy and capacity to obey the law, seeks to understand why Chinese farmers obey or break pesticide rules. It uses data gathered through intensive fieldwork at a local level, including interviews with 31 pesticide experts and officials and 119 vegetable farmers in central China. It uncovers an enforcement–compliance paradox: a situation where law enforcement concentrates exactly on those rules that are least likely to be broken and on those regulated actors who are most likely to comply. It finds two explanations. First, enforcement policy simply may not be aware of which rules are more likely to be complied with and which regulated actors are more likely to comply even when there is limited deterrence. Second, technocratic risk-averse enforcement policy may be oriented towards those rules and actors for which violation – theoretically – results in the greatest damage, not towards those rules that are more likely to be broken and those actors who are more likely to break them.
How does the Chinese government’s adoption of microblogs affect local governance and social contention it is tasked to manage? This case study explores the extent to which government microblogging could serve as: (1) a battering ram to spearhead reforms; (2) a virus bringing unexpected consequences; and (3) a reinforcer of authorities’ existing power, that is, politics as usual. After studying a Chinese municipal government’s microblogs (weibo 微博) in depth from the perspective of local governance, we find that official microblogs do not in the short run lead to organizational change. Instead, Chinese local government microblogs function largely as ‘beta-institutions’ experimenting with ways to interact and negotiate with their microblog publics and microblog service providers and aimed at improving social management and political legitimacy. Local governments are also evolving gradually from service providers to ‘service predictors’ with enhanced capabilities to deliver individualized services and institute state surveillance via commercial service providers. These developments warrant further studies of the long-term implications of microblogs as part of the government information ecology.
This article examines Chinese cyberspace debates over the racial and national identity of a television show contestant Lou Jing, a biracial woman of Chinese and African American descent. We argue that the online commentary about her offers a productive entry point into contemporary Chinese cultural struggles over race. In particular, we consider how the Internet and other digital communication technologies are being mobilized as discursive sites for articulations of Chinese anti-black racism, as well as discursive sites of contestation, knowledge production, and cultural exchange regarding Chinese constructions of race and nationality.