China Information

12/04/2024

OnlineFirst – The socialization of nationalist and socialist values: Construction of the model youth in a Chinese reality TV show, by Zhili Lin, Charity Lee, and Surinderpal Kaur.

- Abstract -

Commenting on the future development of China, President Xi Jinping said, ‘China’s children today are not only undergoing and witnessing the realization of the country’s first centenary goal, they are also a new force for achieving the second centenary goal and building China into a great modern socialist country.’ This statement reflects a socially shared belief that Chinese children and youth are expected to shoulder the responsibility of nation-building. This study explores how the ideology of nationalism is disseminated through the popular Chinese reality TV show, X-Change, via the legitimation of the model Chinese youth. Using Rowan Mackay’s multimodal legitimation framework to analyse six episodes from Season 18 of X-Change, this article explores how the model Chinese youth is semiotically constructed and legitimized. Findings from the analysis reveal how the model Chinese youth represents a specific normalized national identity. This is promoted through the embodiment of the urban–rural binary by the show’s main characters and the representation of the exchange journey as the inner transformation of ‘problematic’ citizens.

Commenting on the future development of China, President Xi Jinping said, ‘China’s children today are not only undergoing and witnessing the realization of the ...

05/02/2024

OnlineFirst – Internationalizing Chinese standards through infrastructure experimentation: Engineering a pumped storage hydropower project in Israel, by Zhuo Chen, Bryan Tilt, and Shaozeng Zhang.

- Abstract -
This ethnographic study examines the implementation of Chinese engineering standards in a multinational pumped storage hydropower project in Israel. Using an ethnographic approach, the study investigates how Chinese standards are negotiated, accepted or rejected within local engineering practice and how Chinese engineers experience the international adoption of their knowledge. We find that although the adoption of Chinese practice-based standards lags behind Western principle-based knowledge in institutional spheres, the gap between the two has started to narrow on an individual level. We also show how the personal lives of Chinese engineers are affected by, and, in turn, have an impact on the standard practices of Belt and Road Initiative projects. The international adoption of Chinese standards is a multi-layered process of infrastructure experimentation on the ground rather than a top–down slogan. Our research broadens the discussion of engineering standards in energy transition and highlights how knowledge and practice flow, or fail to flow, from the infrastructure periphery to its centre, potentially reshaping global energy construction paradigms.

This ethnographic study examines the implementation of Chinese engineering standards in a multinational pumped storage hydropower project in Israel. Using an et...

22/01/2024

Moulüe - Supraplanung: Unerkannte Denkhorizonte aus dem Reich der Mitte, von Harro von Senger.

'Moulüe' ist ein hierzulande weitgehend unbekanntes chinesisches Konzept der Zukunftsgestaltung. Es kann als Lehre vom Gebrauch unlistiger und listiger Strategien und Taktiken möglichst ohne Krieg bezeichnet werden. 'Moulüe' fußt auf dem ältesten Militärtraktat der Welt, 'Meister Suns Kriegskanon', und schärft den planerischen Panoramablick.

22/01/2024

Sun Zi: Die Kunst des Krieges, von Harro von Senger

Das Sun Zi ist etwa 2.500 Jahre alt und stellt in 13 kurzen Kapiteln eine bis heute gültige Sammlung von Anweisungen für eine Kriegsführung im weitesten Sinne dar, die im günstigsten Fall ganz ohne Waffeneinsatz zum Sieg führt. Strategeme und Diplomatie gelten als die besten, die militärische Auseinandersetzung als das schlechteste Mittel der Konfliktlösung. Nicht nur in Managementkreisen oder Politik, sondern auch im Alltag kann das Sun Zi Inspiration zur Überwindung von Konflikten und anderen Herausforderungen liefern.

Das Sun Zi ist etwa 2.500 Jahre alt und stellt in 13 kurzen Kapiteln eine bis heute gültige Sammlung von Anweisungen für eine Kriegsführung im weitesten Sinne dar, die im günstigsten Fall ganz ohne Waffeneinsatz zum Sieg führt. Strategeme und Diplomatie gelten als die besten, die militärische

22/01/2024

Weglaufen ist das Beste: und andere Strategeme aus dem Reich der Mitte zur listkundigen Stressbewältigung, von Harro von Senger.

Nach dem Modell der die List mit umfassenden chinesischen Weisheit sollten auch
Menschen des Abendlandes ihre Klugheit um die Dimension der Strategemkundigkeit
erweitern und so ihre Weisheit optimieren sowie ihre listenblinde Passivität überwinden.

Wer die Anwendung der vom Katalog der 36 Strategeme präsentierten unkonventionellen schlauen Wege der Problemlösung zu dem Zwecke erlernt, konstruktive List zu ethisch sauberen Zwecken wie beispielsweise Stressvermeidung einzusetzen und destruktive, stressfördernde Strategeme anderer zu durchschauen und zu durchkreuzen, tut schließlich nichts anderes, als den Rat Christi zu beherzigen, nicht nur „sanft wie die Tauben“, sondern auch „klug wie die Schlangen“ zu sein.

Kiener-Verlag veröffentlich Bücher – print und online – für Medizin, Komplementärmedizin und mehr und bietet professionelle und engagierte Autorenbegleitung.

08/01/2024

New book – Global China's Shadow Exchange, by Tak-Wing Ngo.

access online for the next two weeks
https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/global-chinas-shadow-exchange/4CB4975B663E43E589860E9B78CF475A

Summary
This Element shows China has assumed a historical role in shaping a new turn in globalization. It has assertively engaged in the open globalizing process through its Belt and Road Initiative as well as in the clandestine process through its shadow networks. These networks have incorporated millions of common people who are unwitting agents of transnational exchange in a global shadow economy. In contrast to the neoliberal phase, the shadow turn in globalization is driven by a plurality of individual, corporate, and state actors with unique divisions of labour, hierarchies of control and domination, and modes of operation. By virtue of being a nodal centre for shadow operations, China is exerting its shadow power in regrouping global city networks, redefining global value chains, and reconfigurating state borders and power.

20/11/2023

Check out the full contents of our Special Issue on Storytelling and Counter-storytelling, November 2023, China Information 37(3).

Table of contents for China Information, 37, 3, Nov 01, 2023

13/07/2023

Check out the full contents of our July issue of 2023, China Information 37(2).

Table of contents for China Information, 37, 2, Jul 01, 2023

12/12/2022

Season’s greetings from China Information, we wish you all good health and prosperity for 2023.

14/10/2022

OnlineFirst – Transnational labour contractor regime in the China–Myanmar borderland: Mitigating hyper-precarity in the sugar cane cutting industry, by Yueping Wang, Tianlong You, and Tian Yang.

- Abstract -
We investigate the labour regime of an agricultural sector in the China–Myanmar borderland. The extant literature on labour generally stresses the hyper-precarity of workers, especially migrant workers. Our case study of the sugar cane cutting industry in Dragon Village, Yunnan Province, suggests that contractors who hire workers from Myanmar are also in a state of hyper-precarity which is shaped by multiple layers of socio-economic and politico-institutional circumstances. We develop an analytic framework for investigating transnational labour contractor regimes, which highlights the strategies jointly adopted by contractors and workers to mitigate the hyper-precarity within which both parties are embedded. We find that contractors are in a hyper-precarious position due to limited micro-level transnational social networks to meet outpaced labour demand, unfavourable meso-level market conditions, and macro-level politico-institutional factors such as the added responsibilities of immigration management, a fast-evolving legal system, and military coups. We also find that contractors adopt strategies to control both workers’ labour process and everyday life, while workers use some counterstrategies to regain agency. Together, they stabilize the labour force for this industry despite their shared hyper-precarity.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0920203X221126847

26/09/2022

OnlineFirst – Mediation and grassroots policing in China: Conflict resolution or social control?, by Lingxiao Zhou.

- Abstract -
This article examines the practices of mediation that have become increasingly common in contemporary grassroots governance in China. The analysis focuses on the mode of governmentality embodied in the discourse on the ‘Fengqiao model’, which supplies a framework for hierarchizing and managing social conflict with the goal of keeping instability at bay. Based on 10 months of ethnographical research in various political-legal organizations within a single county, I found a grassroots governance apparatus that positions a recently invented institution – the Social Governance Centre – as the core organizational locus for coordinating a broadly distributed collection of daily operations aimed at preserving social stability. Analytically, I provide ideal-typical characterizations of three distinct conflict types – ordinary, abnormal, and tricky – to describe the discretionary decision-making by which local party-state operatives perceive and react to social conflicts based on their implications for the value of social stability. Drawn from conversations in the ethnographic literature on policing, this study of street-level mediation contributes to our understanding of how social conflict is rendered policeable, and it provides a case study of the use of mediation as a mode of police work in an authoritarian context.

This article examines the practices of mediation that have become increasingly common in contemporary grassroots governance in China. The analysis focuses on th...

23/09/2022

OnlineFirst – Mobility–ethnicity nexus in the China–North Korea borderland of Yanbian: Migration infrastructure and multi-directional flows, by Shiwei Chen.

- Abstract -
Chinese nationals who are classified as belonging to the Korean ethnic minority have become increasingly mobile since the 1980s in the China–North Korea borderland. Korean ethnicity plays a significant role in facilitating migration. This article unpacks the mobility–ethnicity nexus through the theoretical lens of ‘migration infrastructure’. To investigate how the borderland residents became mobile subjects as well as the processes intertwined with Korean ethnicity, the ensemble of technologies, institutions, and actors through which migration is reproduced and mediated are examined. Drawing on a multi-sited ethnographic study focusing on a rural community, this research analyses the multi-directional flows between the village, urban regions in China, and the two Koreas. Included are discussions on the changing state policies and regulations, diplomatic relationships between China and the two Koreas, growing migrant networks, brokers, family members, humanitarian organizations and other intermediaries that jointly organize and mediate mobilities, and the processes that are usually linked to evoking and redefining ‘Korean’ as an ethnic category. Ethnicity-mediated migration infrastructure enables villagers to move, but throughout the move they are continuously perceived as ethnically Korean. Mobility-sustained ethnicity calls for research to look at how ethnic categories gradually become relevant in everyday life, and ultimately institutionalized as people move between places.

Chinese nationals who are classified as belonging to the Korean ethnic minority have become increasingly mobile since the 1980s in the China–North Korea borderl...