Contemporary China and Its Historical and
Global Context: Beyond the Headlines
Guobin Yang
July 1, 2013
East-West Center
I.
Opportunities and challenges in studying
contemporary China
II. China and the World in Modern History
III. How to go beyond media headlines? Examples
I. Information abundance and competing
narratives about China
• Media and Blogs on China
http://digital-china.blogspot.ie/2013/06/china-onweb.html
Tendency of American students to see things in black
and white, either / or and difficulty in understanding
contradictions, ambivalences, and regional differences
e.g. typical question of whether an NGO can
promote democracy in China
why, among college students, negative perception
of government and yet eager to have a
government job?
why internet culture so lively while internet is
controlled?
…and similar tendency among Chinese when it comes
to understanding the US:
e.g. Six Questions Chinese People Like to Ask
Americans
Kleinman et al (2011)
“surface China”:
Government policies, institutions, market
activities
“deep China”:
emotional and moral experiences of millions
of Chinese, e.g. the notion of the person
Why can copycat
behavior in China be a
form of creativity and
subversion?
Understanding “copycat
China”?
II.
China and the world in modern history
1793 Macartney mission to Qing court and Emperor
Qianlong’s letter to King George III
1839-1842 First Opium War and cession of Hong
Kong to Queen Victoria
Late 19th – early 20th century
Anti-imperialism and national strengthening
through introduction of Western learning and
technology
Republican Revolution of 1911 and fall of Qing
dynasty
New Culture Movement, Introduction of Marxism,
and Founding of the CCP in 1921
Founding of PRC in 1949 and Cold War
US strategy of “peaceful evolution” spelled out by
Secretary of State John Dulles in 1958 and 1959:
“Russian and Chinese Communists are not working
for the welfare of their people,” “this kind of
communism will change.”
Mao convinced the American strategy was taking
effect in the Soviet Union.
In the Cultural Revolution
Third Worldism and anti-imperialism
In the 1980s
Reform and liberalization: Westernization
Since 1990s:
Liberal vs. left views differ
Popular nationalism vs. political dissidence
Western perceptions of China
• Perception of the threat of China’s rise
Based on studies of articles about China in Time, Newsweek and US
News and World Report from Jan 1984 to Dec 1988 and from Jan
1995 to Dec 1999, finds:
US media changed significantly in both reporting volume of
subcategory areas and attitudes about China before and after the
former Soviet Union’s breakup.
Stories during the pre-breakup period depicted China as a prosperous
developing country with good relationships with other countries but an
oppressive Communist nation domestically.
In post-breakup period, China was depicted as an even more
domestically oppressive nation, and one with strained relationships
with the US.
China coverage in the three magazines was much more negative after
the breakup than before (Stone and Xiao 2007)
Willnat and Metzgar (2012)
• Role of Western media in depictions of China
• Role of “Chinese sources” in shaping Western
views of China: e.g. dissidents, English-language
memoirs of Chinese Cultural Revolution
How to go beyond media headlines? Some Examples
1.
Leslie T. Chang: The voices of China's workers
2.
Ruben GonzalezVicente, “Mapping Chinese Mining
Investment in Latin America: Politics or Market?”
(2012) The China Quarterly, 209, 35-58.
“Academic research and media coverage tend to
emphasize what is new and disruptive about China’s
growing engagement in the global economy.
Convergence, “socialization” and internationalization are
more easily overlooked.”
Interested in criteria that guide Chinese FDI.
Is Chinese FDI more likely to go to authoritarian
states?
Do Chinese firms antagonize the purportedly high
social and environmental mining standards of Western
companies?
Findings:
Chinese mining investment in Latin America and
worldwide gravitates towards liberal economies.
China’s overseas mineral quest better explained by
corporate strategies than by China’s geostrategic agenda
of natural resource extraction
Why Peru?
“Peru’s liberal mining regime and its location
in the Pacific Rim are undoubtedly attractive to Chinese
firms, but equally important is the history of Chinese
investment in the country prior to the 2000s. Shougang
Corporation became the first Chinese SOE to undertake an
overseas mining project when it acquired the Marcona mine
in Peru as early as 1992.”
“You need to understand Chinese culture … The
main reason why there are more and more
Chinese companies in Peru is because of
Shougang. Nobody wants to be the first to arrive
to a country. If there are more Chinese people
and companies already there, this will attract
others who will find it easier.”
– manager of Chinese mining company in Peru
Analysis of Chinese mining firms in Peru shows
China’s overseas mineral quest best explained by
probing into the integrated strategies of individual
mining firms which seek to capitalize their comparative
advantage in accessing Chinese markets and the
political momentum of the “Going Out” strategy.
• Failure of earlier companies due to lack of
understanding of local non-market factors
• Success of others which try to adapt to local
conditions (e.g. keeping local staff)
Conclusions:
• Market risk and opportunity are the main criteria
determining Chinese mining investment allocation.
• Chinese firms benefit from specific polices of the
Chinese government, but this is not uniquely
Chinese. It can be compared to the benefits that
American firms receive at times to invest in
countries allied to the US
• Chinese FDI not that much different from Western
FDI.
• Evidence of China’s integration into world rather
than aberration
3.
How are goods Made in China described in mainstream
media? What goods most likely to be reported?
Amy Hanser (2012), ” Yellow peril consumerism: China,
North America, and an era of global trade.” Ethnic and
Racial Studies, Volume 36, Issue 4, 2013.
Explores parallel between ‘yellow peril’ imagery of
pollution & danger used to characterize China historically and
that found in contemporary media accounts representing
Chinese-made goods in USA.
Based on survey of reporting on two key events involving
Chinese imports (pet food and toys) in 3 largest circulating
newspapers in US
Two arguments:
1) Shows in an era of ‘free trade’ and accelerated
globalization, how global movement of goods serves as
powerful bearer of racializing categories in the terrain of
American consumerism and domesticity.
2) Media narratives about consumer welfare and the
threatened American consumer provide moral anchor for
larger story about US national interest and ‘proper’
capitalism in the context of China’s ‘rise’.
In the earlier period, China was perceived as a global
threat largely through its people, who imperiled
the quality and civility of populations in places like
North America through what was feared would be
‘droves’ of immigrants.
Past ‘fears of contagion’ associated with Chinese
bodies find echoes in contemporary discourses about
China. Today, racialized anxieties about physical
proximity are produced through the intimacies of
global trade, as ‘China Made’ goods enter the homes
of American consumers.
Lead’s centrality is especially clear with the second
wave of recalls from Mattel, when the toy company
recalled close to 1,000,000 toy cars coated with lead
paint but over 18,000,000 toys fitted with dangerous
magnets. Although the magnet problem was clearly a
Mattel design flaw, the title of The NewYork Times
article on the recall implies Chinese responsibility:
‘Mattel Recalls 19 Million Toys Sent From China’
(NYT8/15/07, p. A1)
4. Twitter activism
Chinese-language Twitter activism
A small group of activists in China
Dissidents in exile
Western journalists
Unorganized, but networked
A “permanent campaign”
Citizen journalism as activism
High visibility
Radical, subversive discourse
Twitter chats with Dala Lama
Petition to award Nobel Peace prize to dissident Liu Xiaobo
Artist-activist Ai Weiwei’s repeated efforts to challenge state
policing by organizing public dinner parties through Twitter
Numerous petitions in support of harassed or arrested human
rights activists
Calls for the overthrow of the current Chinese regime
International political opportunity:
1. A global discourse on human rights provides legitimacy
(Padovani, Musiani, and Pavan 2010)
2. Global discourse on freedom of speech &
communication rights, including discourse on internet
freedom.
E.g. Google white paper “Enabling Trade in the Era of
Information Technologies: Breaking Down Barriers to
the Free Flow of Information”
3. Expansion of institutional support for human rights
activism.
a) international institutions such as UN human rights
treaty bodies
b) growing # of international human rights NGOs
(Tsutsui and Wotipka 2004)
c)
use of international diplomacy by nation-states to
champion human rights activists in other nations
d) international human rights prizes as mechanism
of promoting human rights causes.
Sample international prizes for Chinese activists:
European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of
Thought (given to Hu Jia in 2008)
Deutsche Welle’s International Weblog Awards (to bloggerlawyer Liu Xiaoyuan in 2008)
“Courage in Journalism” Award given by International
Women’s Media Foundation (to Tibetan blogger-activist
Tsering Woeser in 2010),
Palmarès prize of the French National Consultative
Commission on Human Rights (to blogger Bei Feng, 2010)
Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo in 2010.
Global media and Chinese blogger-activists:
November 18, 2010
LexisNexis newspaper database
key word search for “blogger” in The New York Times.
Then searched within results for “China.”
Yields 86 results.
First was published December 19, 2004,
Last published on October 31, 2010.
49 of the 86 articles are stories about China (the other
37 only mentioned China).
These 49 stories mentioned or cited 39 Chinese
bloggers by name.
12 of them are mentioned in more than one story.
5 are featured.
In addition, the stories frequently cite anonymous
bloggers as their sources, such as “a blogger,” “one
liberal Chinese blogger,” “a China-based blogger,” “a
popular Beijing blogger,” “bloggers who tread too often
into delicate territory,” and “an anonymous blogger.”