NOTES Introduction: Christian “Civilizing Missions” of the Past and Present 1. Such studies are critical of the commonly held assumption that a high degree of “participation” by local people inevitably leads to their “empowerment” (Chambers 1983, 1994; Arnstein 1969; Pretty 1995; Cornwall 1996). 2. One of the reasons for the lack of historical comparison is the appar- ently significant changes in the way the Chinese government has dealt with Christianity over time. In particular, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) expelled Christian missionaries from the country in 1953. Since this time, foreign religious activity has been strictly con- trolled. However, despite these controls, since the late 1980s, interna- tional aid and development NGOs have been working in China, and many of them are either explicitly Christian in their orientation or affiliated with Christianity in some way. 3. In this regard, Rosemary Foot (2000) and Ann Kent (1999) provide representative studies from an international relations perspective. Foot (2000) explores the process of the diffusion of the interna- tional human rights norm in China and the importance of the notion of “global community” to China. Kent (1999) investigates China’s gradual socialization into the international human rights regime. 4. Also see Oakes’ (1995) discussion of “internal colonialism” and Schein’s (1997) discussion of “internal orientalism” in a Chinese context. 5. The main focus is on the interaction between international Christian agencies and ethnic communities in China, although the study also takes into account the importance of the Chinese central and local governments when and where appropriate. During the Maoist era, the Chinese central and local governments were deeply enmeshed in ethnic communities, a fact that has left an indelible mark on the col- lective consciousness within the communities. In addition, the activi- ties of NGOs are controlled and have to be approved by both the central and local governments. 210 Notes 6. The introduction to part II will explain each of these three broad themes, but it is important to briefly touch on the second theme here. The author does not assume that the case-study NGOs reformulate their identity in mainland China. Rather, the main enquiry in relation to this theme is whether, and if so how, they reformulate their identity in mainland China. 7. Julia Berger (2003) also suggests that characteristics of religious NGOs can be determined by a complex set of analyses of such things as its self-identity, structure, financing, and output, among others. 8. Oxfam has Quaker origins and, as explored later, Quakerism and secularism are intricately connected. From this point of view, evangelism and secularism should not be completely dichotomized. Rather, they should be understood as lying at two ends of an evangelism-secularism spectrum. 9. In recent years, there has existed an official taxonomy of social organizations in China. Fei zhengfu zuzhi is not used by Chinese organizations; instead they use minjian zuzhi. Ma (2003) mentions that the term NGO started to become more widely known after the 1995 Fourth World Women’s Conference in Beijing. “To prepare Chinese women’s organizations to understand the meaning and practice of fei zhengfu zuzhi, the All-China Women’s Federation launched a campaign to train women leaders at all levels.” As a result of the campaign, most of the 1,910,000 women leaders and activists learnt the term fei zhengfu zuzhi for the first time. 10. The problem in attaching a religious label to an NGO is by no means unique to China. Irrespective of whether it is in China or other parts of the world, from a practical point of view, many NGOs are reluctant “to use the term ‘religion’ in describing themselves and their activities” because of “the potentially negative connotations associated with religious references as well as legal obstacles that arise when applying for public funding” (Berger 2003: 17). 11. China has a number of mass organizations (for example, the All- China Women’s Federation) and so-called GONGOs (government- organized NGOs) (for example, the China Family Planning Association). Some studies argue about the extent to which GONGOs can play an important role in China’s civil society (Ma 2002b; Wu 2003; Jackson et al. 2005). For example, Fengshi Wu (2003) argues that gradually GONGOs have become independent of the state from a funding point of view. Other scholars argue that NGOs in general are at risk of becoming mere service utility providers—namely, suborganizations of the government—because they lack sufficient autonomy to advocate for Chinese society, and to challenge the Chinese state (Unger and Chan 1995). 12. One of the case studies of this book, The Salvation Army, actually claims to be an “international movement” in the context outside Notes 211 mainland China. An international movement is quite distinct from NGOs in discussions within transnational civil society literature (Khagram et al. 2002). However, within mainland China, The Salvation Army identifies itself as an “international NGO.” 13. This definition draws on Berger’s (2003) definition of religious NGOs and Patrick Kilby’s (2006) focus on NGOs as value-based entities that desire a “better world.” 14. The mixture of the religious and secular values is pointed out in some literature dealing with Christian missionaries. See, for example, Comaroff and Comaroff (1991) and Comaroff (1993). 1 “Civilizing Missions” and Ethnic Communities in China 1. The distinction between the unitary and pluralist conceptions of civilization relates to the etymology of civilization in French and German languages. Brett Bowden’s (2004b) study traces the etymo- logical origins of civilization in the French, English, and German languages. 2. Samuel Huntington defines a civilization as “a culture writ large,” or as “the broadest cultural entity” (1996: 41, 43). A number of studies that also take the pluralist conception of “civilization” criticize Huntington as essentialist, however, because he describes civiliza- tion as a “billiard-ball”-type entity that contains a fixed set of values (Cox 2002; Delanty 2003; Mandalios 2003). These critical studies instead regard a civilization as an essentially porous and fluid entity— that is, a set of “symbolic frontiers, not iron curtains” (Mandalios 2003: 74). 3. This form of phonetic use of Chinese pictographs has no meaning beyond the representation of a sequence of sounds as they occur in the Chinese mind. 4. Many neologisms were introduced into China at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries, for exam- _ ple, sovereignty, nation, ethnic, and mediation (Chiu 1970; Kato and _ Maruyama 1991; Liu 1995, 1999; Maruyama and Kato 1998). Although some of these terms appear in classics of a few thousand years ago, their meanings were “new” at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries when China was increasingly exposed to Western political and social thought. 5. The term bunmei can be identified in the literature of seventeenth century Japan. In his writing, “The True Facts concerning the _ _ _ Middle Kingdom” (Chucho Jijitsu), Yamaga Soko implies a Japan- centric worldview (antecedent to a Sino-centric worldview). In so doing, he uses the term bunmei. For example, “[Japan] has flourished 212 Notes with bunmei (civilization), and the imperial line has never ended, and will never end” (Yamaga 1939: 37–9). Another interesting example is _ _ his use of the term Chuka bunmei. In Japanese, Chuka usually means China, but Yamaga, in his attempt to spread the Japan-centric _ worldview in his seventeenth-century work, used Chuka bunmei to refer to a Japan-centric civilization (21). Fukuzawa (1931) understood civilization as the result of progress through stages from barbarianism through semiopenness to civilization, and understood the West to be the world’s most civilized zone. His formulation leaves no room for the coexistence of different civilization, but holds Western civilization up as the ultimate civiliza- tion (Yamamuro 2001). In exploring the Japanese understanding of civilization, a Japanese translation of Henry Wheaton (1936) reveals _ _ “all civilized nations” translated as “Christian countries” (Yaso d o shu _ no kuni). Maruyama and Kato (1998: 135) claim that Wheaton himself understood civilized nations as Christian nations. 6. For a detailed discussion of the differences and similarities among the theories, see Hutchinson and Smith (1996) and Mount (2003). 7. This point coincides with Benedict Anderson (1983) in dealing with nationalism as a mode of political imagination. 8. For other explanations of conscious resistance, see Scott (1990) and Colburn (1989). 9. In discussing a people’s consent to a superior ideology, Antonio Gramsci’s “hegemony” is important; but this book takes an approach different from his. In his Prison Notebooks he contends that “hegemony” is produced as a result of “the ‘spontaneous’ consent given by the great masses of the population to the general direction imposed on social life by the dominant fundamental group; this consent is ‘historically’ caused by the prestige (and consequent confidence) which the dominant group enjoys because of its posi- tion and function in the world of production” (1971: 12). However, Gramsci concentrates on the particular situation in which people give “spontaneous consent” to the dominant group, which, if such consent is not forthcoming, resorts to coercive force. He does not discuss the situation in which people give nonspontaneous consent; in other words, the people are able to give their consent after due consideration of the civilizational ideology of the dominant group. 10. David Beetham’s (1991) definition of legitimacy provides a useful reference here. In defining legitimacy as not only a “top-down” construction generated by dominant groups, but also a “bottom-up” construction generated by subordinate groups, his emphasis is on the interaction between the two groups and particularly the extent to which subordinate groups give their consent to the dominant group’s projects, that is, the ideologies implicit in any particular development project.