Mapping China Journal 2020 / No
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
MAPPING CHINA JOURNAL 2 0 2 0 ABOUT MAPPING CHINA Mapping China is a young professional network and NGO dedicated to a political science-based analysis of contemporary China. Mapping China was founded in 2016 as an academic network connecting Masters and Doctoral students as well as young professionals working on China with a social science approach to foster exchange and knowledge among the new generation of China watchers. Although founded, based and registered as a non-profit (a so-called e.V.) in Germany, Mapping China now connects students and young professionals from all over the world. Mapping China offers students and young professionals a publication platform for their own academic work on China in order to engage in an academic discussion within a wider audience early on in their academic career. ABOUT THIS JOURNAL This peer-reviewed Journal is explicitly aimed at publishing work written by early career researchers with an interdisciplinary background in Area Studies, Political and Social Science or in International Relations who have been working on or want to work on China and who are looking to publish their first research for a wider audience. I The Mapping China Journal is an open access publication. It can be read and downloaded free of charge on the Internet under www.mappingchina.de/journal and may be freely duplicated, distributed and made publicly available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-ND 4.0). Mapping China e.V. is the publisher and in charge of the editorial management of the Mapping China Journal. The views represented are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the Mapping China. The authors are responsible for the content of their contributions. Errors and omissions are reserved. Mapping China and authors are not liable for accuracy and completeness or for consequences arising from the use of the information provided. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Picture credit: all pictures are taken from www.unsplash.com Title page, p. 1 & p. 25: Photo by Radoslav Bali p. 2: Photo by John Salvino p. 9: Photo by hiurich granja p. 19: Photo by Hans Vivek p. 26: Photo by Siriwan Srisuwan p. 56: Photo by Hanson Lu p. 91: Photo by Sun Lingyan p. 118: Photo by Till Kottmann p. 128: Photo by simon sun p. 141: Photo by Pat Whelen II EDITORS Straton Papagianneas Tatjana Romig Julia Tatrai (Special Essay Edition) EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Aya Adachi EDITORIAL ADVISORS Jörn-Carsten Gottwald Ruhr-University Bochum Robert Pauls Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University Gregor Walter-Drop Freie Universitaẗ Berlin PEER REVIEW Marianne von Blomberg University of Cologne and Zhejiang University Axel Dessein King’s College London Maria Faust University of Leipzig Frank O’Donnell Stimson Center Alex Smith The New Zealand Treasury Holly Snape University of Glasgow Gregor Walter-Drop Freie Universität Berlin Jue Wang Leiden University Theo Westphal University of Sheffield LANGUAGE CHECK Katherine Samson DESIGN AND LAYOUT Tatjana Romig Julia Tatrai III Note of the Editors By Straton Papagianneas, Tatjana Romig and Julia Tatrai Mapping China was founded in 2016 as an academic network connecting Master and Doctoral level students as well as young professionals working on China with a social science approach to foster knowledge exchange among a new generation of China analysts and observers. Although founded, based and registered as a non-profit (a so-called e.V.) in Germany, Mapping China now connects students and young professionals from all over the world. In December 2017 the inaugural issue of Mapping China Journal (MCJ) was published focusing on integration processes and challenges linked to Chinese engagement in three regions of the world: Asia-Pacific, Africa, and the EU. The numerous submissions to this project and subsequent exchanges reflect the willingness of a new generation of young China scholars to participate in the dynamic discourse on contemporary China. The second edition of Mapping China Journal (2018) offered a fresh take on the developments and challenges under the current leadership of the People’s Republic of China. Since 2019, the MCJ has been a journal open to all topics – something which we slightly adapted again in 2020. 2020 was a year of the unexpected, and its challenges also affected the editorial work of this year’s Mapping China Journal. We are therefore very proud to publish this year’s edition after all and want to thank everyone who dedicated time and energy to this project throughout this challenging year. We also want to take a moment to highlight that the MCJ has not achieved gender parity this year – something we regret deeply and fear to be a visible manifestation of what gender research has highlighted this year: women are still disparagingly affected with regards to care work, which becomes especially visible during crises. China has been in the news front and centre ever since COVID-19 became more than a phenomenon only known to avid China watchers at the beginning of the year. A lot has happened this year - from ousted President Trump calling the virus “China virus”, to the US leaving the WHO, as well as China challenging the status quo in the Taiwan strait. We have seen a number of our truths being challenged; political system alone, for example, seems disqualified to explain why some countries did better or worse in dealing with the virus. Nonetheless, China’s rise might have been impacted and its soft power certainly took a hit. Other, less news-worthy events already seem IV to be forgotten, like Xi Jinping’s speech on carbon neutrality or the continuing internment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang. This is why, in addition to our regular journal edition which invited submissions at the beginning of 2020, we also announced a second call for essays in autumn as a special edition to this year’s journal. Those essays look explicitly at the rapid transformations of both real-life politics and political or regional studies as areas of research in 2020. We particularly want to thank both the authors and peer reviewers for the extensive hours they put in to make this special issue happen. Martin Thorley has taken our original special call for essays for a spin and looks at the engagement with China in the age of COVID-19 for the Western world. He makes a particular point on the importance of China experts taking note of elite domination within the PRC and warns of the risk of China illiterates becoming unwilling participants in reality construction. In a timely essay on the US-Chinese educational exchange, Leigh Lawrence fears that COVID- 19 and the cancellation of exchange programs between the two countries is only the most recent visible manifestation of what has been a steadily decaying relationship since Donald J. Trump won the US elections in 2016. Recovering much lost trust will have to take effort on both sides. There were several countries this year that not only had to fight COVID-19 but also engaged in wide-spread political and social protests. Gabriel F. Y. Tsang is looking at one of them: Hong Kong, which has been in turmoil since the extradition bill protests of 2019. Tsang does not see COVID-19 as a hindering influence on PRC’s conscious strategy of “mainlandising” Hong Kong; to the contrary, crowd control enforced as part of virus contagion has helped to actualize the PRC’s wish for unification. As part of our regular journal edition, Ivan Lidarev is examining a long-standing conflict between China and one of its most important neighbours: India. Based on field research in both China and India, he argues that in addition to the militarisation of the de-facto border between the two countries, three critical aspects feed into the security dilemma between the two countries: the relationship between the territorial dispute and the questions around Tibet, the potential impact on India’s unstable Northeast, and the involvement of the United States. Staying in the realm of international politics, Sophie Cheung explores the Chinese government’s foreign policy slogan “a community of shared future for mankind” through extensive discourse V analysis. Her findings show that Beijing aims at creating a strategic narrative to position itself as a responsible leader in an interdependent international system. While China’s role in the international arena remains a hot topic, its domestic developments also deserve attention. Max Paul Greve-Gao dedicates his research to the case of migrant workers in China. In his article, he merges theoretical concepts of class and precarisation to then retrace the class formation process of migrant workers. His research shows that this theoretical framework offers a fresh perspective on questions surrounding social dynamics and class formation in China. While COVID-19 is continuing to cause social and economic damages across the world, especially in Europe and the US, China’s economy has slowly started to rebound. The allure of the Chinese market needs no explanation. However, as Tina Schär argues in her essay, foreign companies and governments alike should be wary of how China uses its leverage for political ends. Consumer- boycotts, started organically or by the government, are a powerful deterrent for anyone interested in the Chinese market to not meddle in its “internal affairs”. Recounting the Carrefour boycott as an example, she argues that its political utility for the Chinese government makes it a key tool in its management of foreign affairs. In hindsight, the Carrefour boycott was only a taste of what was to come, as companies, ranging from the NBA and Arsenal to Zara and Dolce & Gabbana, will know all too well.