Pub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.1177/0920203X221081349a
Shenggao Wang, I. Jiménez
ities under the BRI seek either to upend the logistics, which were established during colonial times, or to extend regional bonds through planned continent-wide routes. Based on the acknowledgement of the importance of a well-functioning logistics sector for China’s recent internal development, Rimmer makes the case for putting geologistics at the heart of assessing the BRI. Thus, he uses geologistics as ‘a framework for considering its global implications’ (p. ix). The first chapter of the book explains how the BRI’s land-based and maritime activities fit into this framework. For the former, the author groups the projects into land bridges, economic corridors, and dry ports; and for the latter he studies blue economic passages, economic circles, and seaport hubs. Chapter 2 summarizes the evolution of the BRI, relating China’s domestic experiences with developing a modern logistics sector to the leadership’s foreign policy goals. Chapters 3 and 4 consider the land-based transport infrastructure in Eurasia. In Chapters 5 to 8, Rimmer discusses the development of seaborne global connections. Chapter 9 concludes with a brief evaluation of the first five years of the BRI. With its comprehensive overview of the BRI’s global extent, the book is a primer for students of China’s foreign economic policy. It is a valuable guide for engaging in the study of global and regional developments that the initiative has instigated. It helps to formulate in-depth questions for further research on the agency of host countries, in light of various examples of reluctant participation in BRI projects and increased activity to pursue competing undertakings. Since Rimmer assesses both the BRI’s evolution as well as political and logistic responses in the targeted regions, the book provides an essential read for understanding how extensive, transnational transport routes under the initiative reconstitute the geographic arena for China’s policymakers. Scholars of international relations and China’s role in international affairs will find the overview of the BRI and its clear maps useful. Students of India’s relations with China will discover interesting threads that can inspire further research, because many of the initiative’s land-based corridors and maritime activities are evolving in the vicinity of India. The book ends with a timely reminder of the importance of new technologies for establishing modern transport infrastructure and its growing effect on international relations. The efforts of Huawei Marine Telecommunications to link coastal cities in transoceanic fibre-optic networks serve as an example for new technologies that students of international relations and China’s role in the world should follow closely to understand the real impact of the BRI and its political ramifications.
{"title":"Book Review: Dependency in the Twenty-First Century? The Political Economy of China–Latin America Relations by Barbara Stallings","authors":"Shenggao Wang, I. Jiménez","doi":"10.1177/0920203X221081349a","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0920203X221081349a","url":null,"abstract":"ities under the BRI seek either to upend the logistics, which were established during colonial times, or to extend regional bonds through planned continent-wide routes. Based on the acknowledgement of the importance of a well-functioning logistics sector for China’s recent internal development, Rimmer makes the case for putting geologistics at the heart of assessing the BRI. Thus, he uses geologistics as ‘a framework for considering its global implications’ (p. ix). The first chapter of the book explains how the BRI’s land-based and maritime activities fit into this framework. For the former, the author groups the projects into land bridges, economic corridors, and dry ports; and for the latter he studies blue economic passages, economic circles, and seaport hubs. Chapter 2 summarizes the evolution of the BRI, relating China’s domestic experiences with developing a modern logistics sector to the leadership’s foreign policy goals. Chapters 3 and 4 consider the land-based transport infrastructure in Eurasia. In Chapters 5 to 8, Rimmer discusses the development of seaborne global connections. Chapter 9 concludes with a brief evaluation of the first five years of the BRI. With its comprehensive overview of the BRI’s global extent, the book is a primer for students of China’s foreign economic policy. It is a valuable guide for engaging in the study of global and regional developments that the initiative has instigated. It helps to formulate in-depth questions for further research on the agency of host countries, in light of various examples of reluctant participation in BRI projects and increased activity to pursue competing undertakings. Since Rimmer assesses both the BRI’s evolution as well as political and logistic responses in the targeted regions, the book provides an essential read for understanding how extensive, transnational transport routes under the initiative reconstitute the geographic arena for China’s policymakers. Scholars of international relations and China’s role in international affairs will find the overview of the BRI and its clear maps useful. Students of India’s relations with China will discover interesting threads that can inspire further research, because many of the initiative’s land-based corridors and maritime activities are evolving in the vicinity of India. The book ends with a timely reminder of the importance of new technologies for establishing modern transport infrastructure and its growing effect on international relations. The efforts of Huawei Marine Telecommunications to link coastal cities in transoceanic fibre-optic networks serve as an example for new technologies that students of international relations and China’s role in the world should follow closely to understand the real impact of the BRI and its political ramifications.","PeriodicalId":45809,"journal":{"name":"China Information","volume":"36 1","pages":"135 - 137"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47878330","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.1177/0920203X221081349
S. Handke
{"title":"Book Review: China’s Global Vision and Actions: Reactions to Belt, Road and Beyond by Peter J. Rimmer","authors":"S. Handke","doi":"10.1177/0920203X221081349","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0920203X221081349","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45809,"journal":{"name":"China Information","volume":"153 1","pages":"134 - 135"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41292093","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.1177/0920203X221081349f
S. Rosen
{"title":"Book Review: The Chinese Communist Youth League: Juniority and Responsiveness in a Party Youth Organization by Konstantinos D. Tsimonis","authors":"S. Rosen","doi":"10.1177/0920203X221081349f","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0920203X221081349f","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45809,"journal":{"name":"China Information","volume":"36 1","pages":"144 - 145"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43742474","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-02-11DOI: 10.1177/0920203X221075308
Kathryn Batchelor
The question of who represents Africa and how Africa is represented to global audiences continues to be hotly debated in academic publications and in the media. The majority of these discussions critique Western representations of Africa, or set up the West as the implied Other in debates over Africa’s right to self-representation. In recent years, however, Africa has found itself increasingly represented by the People’s Republic of China. This article examines the visual representations of ‘Africa’ that are used in promotional material produced by China in connection with official China–Africa cooperation. The article finds that one of the dominant stereotypes used by China is that of natural, ‘primitive’ Africa, a stereotype that has historically been strongly associated with the imperial gaze of the West. This is seen as potentially undermining key elements of China–Africa discourse, notably China’s emphasis on respect for its African partners. At the same time, the article highlights similarities between the imperial gaze and the tourist gaze, and considers the possibility that China’s representations of Africa might be compatible with a tourist gaze on Africa.
{"title":"Images of ‘Africa’ in China–Africa cooperation","authors":"Kathryn Batchelor","doi":"10.1177/0920203X221075308","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0920203X221075308","url":null,"abstract":"The question of who represents Africa and how Africa is represented to global audiences continues to be hotly debated in academic publications and in the media. The majority of these discussions critique Western representations of Africa, or set up the West as the implied Other in debates over Africa’s right to self-representation. In recent years, however, Africa has found itself increasingly represented by the People’s Republic of China. This article examines the visual representations of ‘Africa’ that are used in promotional material produced by China in connection with official China–Africa cooperation. The article finds that one of the dominant stereotypes used by China is that of natural, ‘primitive’ Africa, a stereotype that has historically been strongly associated with the imperial gaze of the West. This is seen as potentially undermining key elements of China–Africa discourse, notably China’s emphasis on respect for its African partners. At the same time, the article highlights similarities between the imperial gaze and the tourist gaze, and considers the possibility that China’s representations of Africa might be compatible with a tourist gaze on Africa.","PeriodicalId":45809,"journal":{"name":"China Information","volume":"36 1","pages":"221 - 240"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2022-02-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48609944","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-12-22DOI: 10.1177/0920203X211060977
Wing-chung Ho, Lin Li
This study explores the experience of elderly rural Buddhist and Taoist believers in communist China where the ruling party has maintained decades-long regulatory control over religion. Based on ethnographic observation and oral histories, the analysis begins with how the actors made sense of and coped in their relationship with the state during the fieldwork period (May–June 2020) when state regulations restricted public religious practice because of COVID-19. The analysis then looks back on how practitioners experienced tightening state ideological control from the early 2010s to before COVID-19; further back at the religious revival during the opening and reform (1980s–2010s); and finally, the Cultural Revolution period (1960s–70s) when strict atheistic measures were imposed. Their narratives reveal the practical logic (habitus) which practitioners used to mediate their resistance against and compromise with the authoritarian state. Specifically, four logical modes that involve actors’ different time–space tactics were identified, namely state–religion disengagement, state–religion enhancement, religious (dis)enlightenment, and karma. The implications of these ostensibly conflicting modes of thinking in mediating the actors’ resistance–compliance interface in contemporary China are discussed.
{"title":"The time–space tactics of Chinese Buddhist and Taoist believers under state–religion tension","authors":"Wing-chung Ho, Lin Li","doi":"10.1177/0920203X211060977","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0920203X211060977","url":null,"abstract":"This study explores the experience of elderly rural Buddhist and Taoist believers in communist China where the ruling party has maintained decades-long regulatory control over religion. Based on ethnographic observation and oral histories, the analysis begins with how the actors made sense of and coped in their relationship with the state during the fieldwork period (May–June 2020) when state regulations restricted public religious practice because of COVID-19. The analysis then looks back on how practitioners experienced tightening state ideological control from the early 2010s to before COVID-19; further back at the religious revival during the opening and reform (1980s–2010s); and finally, the Cultural Revolution period (1960s–70s) when strict atheistic measures were imposed. Their narratives reveal the practical logic (habitus) which practitioners used to mediate their resistance against and compromise with the authoritarian state. Specifically, four logical modes that involve actors’ different time–space tactics were identified, namely state–religion disengagement, state–religion enhancement, religious (dis)enlightenment, and karma. The implications of these ostensibly conflicting modes of thinking in mediating the actors’ resistance–compliance interface in contemporary China are discussed.","PeriodicalId":45809,"journal":{"name":"China Information","volume":"36 1","pages":"241 - 261"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2021-12-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43992947","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-12-06DOI: 10.1177/0920203X211050319
Jinghan Gong, Tingting Liu
Departing from the prevailing, individualist perspective of freedom, emphasizing individuals’ independence and the maximization of self-interest via unconstrained decision-making, this article applies the concepts of practised freedom and relational autonomy to explore the lived experience of Chinese rural-to-urban migrant gay men. Drawing on our ethnographic fieldwork in the ‘urban villages’ (城中村) of South China, we examine the ways in which rural migrant gay men achieve a sense of freedom, which is dependent on rural-to-urban migration, informal manufacturing jobs, and other queer peers, thus demonstrating a certain level of relational autonomy. Our article clearly shows how these men have come to identify as homeless guabi (挂逼, local slang for those who suffer a tragic and mysterious fate) and spend their days wandering, with no interest in stable work or long-term monogamous relationships. Our research offers a first-hand anthropological account of young adults from the rural working classes who prefer to ‘lie flat’ (躺平) – they refuse to strive for upward social mobility because they believe that upward social mobility is unattainable and a factory job too taxing.
{"title":"Decadence and relational freedom among China's gay migrants: Subverting heteronormativity by ‘lying flat’","authors":"Jinghan Gong, Tingting Liu","doi":"10.1177/0920203X211050319","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0920203X211050319","url":null,"abstract":"Departing from the prevailing, individualist perspective of freedom, emphasizing individuals’ independence and the maximization of self-interest via unconstrained decision-making, this article applies the concepts of practised freedom and relational autonomy to explore the lived experience of Chinese rural-to-urban migrant gay men. Drawing on our ethnographic fieldwork in the ‘urban villages’ (城中村) of South China, we examine the ways in which rural migrant gay men achieve a sense of freedom, which is dependent on rural-to-urban migration, informal manufacturing jobs, and other queer peers, thus demonstrating a certain level of relational autonomy. Our article clearly shows how these men have come to identify as homeless guabi (挂逼, local slang for those who suffer a tragic and mysterious fate) and spend their days wandering, with no interest in stable work or long-term monogamous relationships. Our research offers a first-hand anthropological account of young adults from the rural working classes who prefer to ‘lie flat’ (躺平) – they refuse to strive for upward social mobility because they believe that upward social mobility is unattainable and a factory job too taxing.","PeriodicalId":45809,"journal":{"name":"China Information","volume":"36 1","pages":"200 - 220"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2021-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41864123","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-11-30DOI: 10.1177/0920203X211055038
A. Wu, Lüzhou Li
Often analysing ‘the Chinese Internet’ as a national entity, existing research has overlooked China's provincially oriented web portals, which have supplied information and entertainment to substantial user populations. Through the lenses of the critical political economy of media and critical media industry studies, this article traces the ascendance of China's provincial web from the late 1990s to the early 2000s by analysing industry yearbooks, official reports, conference records, personal memoirs, archived webpages, and user traffic data. We uncover interactions between Internet service providers, legacy media organizations, commercial Internet companies, and the central and local governments – each driven by discrete economic interests, political concerns, and imaginaries about the new technology. Delineating the emergence and consolidation of China's provincial web, our study foregrounds the understudied political economy of online content regionalization at scale. Further, it sheds new light on Chinese media policy, Internet governance, and Internet histories, especially the widely noted conservative turn of online cultures after the mid-2010s.
{"title":"Localism in Internet governance: The rise of China's provincial web","authors":"A. Wu, Lüzhou Li","doi":"10.1177/0920203X211055038","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0920203X211055038","url":null,"abstract":"Often analysing ‘the Chinese Internet’ as a national entity, existing research has overlooked China's provincially oriented web portals, which have supplied information and entertainment to substantial user populations. Through the lenses of the critical political economy of media and critical media industry studies, this article traces the ascendance of China's provincial web from the late 1990s to the early 2000s by analysing industry yearbooks, official reports, conference records, personal memoirs, archived webpages, and user traffic data. We uncover interactions between Internet service providers, legacy media organizations, commercial Internet companies, and the central and local governments – each driven by discrete economic interests, political concerns, and imaginaries about the new technology. Delineating the emergence and consolidation of China's provincial web, our study foregrounds the understudied political economy of online content regionalization at scale. Further, it sheds new light on Chinese media policy, Internet governance, and Internet histories, especially the widely noted conservative turn of online cultures after the mid-2010s.","PeriodicalId":45809,"journal":{"name":"China Information","volume":"36 1","pages":"262 - 282"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2021-11-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45447354","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-11-01DOI: 10.1177/0920203X211051055a
Steve Harrisson
settlement . . . was the Nationalist regime of Chiang Kai-shek, not the Communist government of Mao Zedong’ (p. 13). Chapters 2 through 5 explore the uneven, often contentious, at times comical elevation of the profiles of Chiang Kai-shek and his party for their World War II and post-war roles. Mitter traces the evolution of historical narrative through the lenses of an expanded latitude for historians, a less constrained public sphere, public memorialization, and the evolving symbolism of Chongqing and Yan’an (the respective wartime bases of Chiang’s Nationalists and Mao’s Communists). Among the interesting episodes discussed are the phenomenon of ‘Kuomintang/Republican fans’ (國粉) and the Nationalists’ 1938 victory against the Japanese in the Battle of Taierzhuang. Praise of the Kuomintang for success in the latter was eased by the fact that one of the generals, Li Zongren, defected to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) after the Communists’ victory in the Chinese civil war. The final chapter follows the new, guardedly pro-Nationalist narrative onto the global stage. Here, the party narrative has highlighted the immediate aftermath of World War II, especially the November 1943 Cairo Conference. That meeting between Allied leaders Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Chiang Kai-shek receives far less attention amongWestern historians than do the earlier Atlantic Charter or the subsequent Allied meetings at Tehran and Yalta – none of which involved Chiang. Mitter sees some justice in Chinese pique at such neglect. ‘Few in the West have explored China’s wartime goals as seen through Chinese eyes’ (p. 28). In post-1980s Chinese narratives, China’s contributions both to the war effort and to the creation of a new post-WorldWar II global order constitute a key rationale for the PRC’s role in helping to shape the still emerging order of the post-Cold War world. AswithChinese public and cultural diplomacymore generally, these efforts have included awkward moments. An early poster for the 2015 movie, Cairo Declaration (dir. Wen Deguang and Hu Minggang), for example, featured Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin (neither of whom attended the conference), along with Roosevelt and Churchill. The film’s semi-fictionalized Roosevelt anticipates Xi Jinping’s China, declaring that ‘China’s war has changed the world. China is a responsible world power.’ Some readers may find helpful the author’s subtle application to his material of theories about vectors and circuits of memory. ‘Soft power’ will be familiar to more readers. Mitter offers occasional observations on contemporary politics beyond (though geopolitically related to) China, such as populism and internationalism. Finally, he includes numerous suggestive analogies – to civil wars in Spain and Greece, to the collaborationist Vichy government in France, to successive wars in Vietnam, to more stable memories of World War II in most Western nations – which might be fruitfully pursued in future scholarship.
{"title":"Book review: China's Fintech Explosion: Disruption, Innovation, and Survival by Sara Hsu and Jianjun Li","authors":"Steve Harrisson","doi":"10.1177/0920203X211051055a","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0920203X211051055a","url":null,"abstract":"settlement . . . was the Nationalist regime of Chiang Kai-shek, not the Communist government of Mao Zedong’ (p. 13). Chapters 2 through 5 explore the uneven, often contentious, at times comical elevation of the profiles of Chiang Kai-shek and his party for their World War II and post-war roles. Mitter traces the evolution of historical narrative through the lenses of an expanded latitude for historians, a less constrained public sphere, public memorialization, and the evolving symbolism of Chongqing and Yan’an (the respective wartime bases of Chiang’s Nationalists and Mao’s Communists). Among the interesting episodes discussed are the phenomenon of ‘Kuomintang/Republican fans’ (國粉) and the Nationalists’ 1938 victory against the Japanese in the Battle of Taierzhuang. Praise of the Kuomintang for success in the latter was eased by the fact that one of the generals, Li Zongren, defected to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) after the Communists’ victory in the Chinese civil war. The final chapter follows the new, guardedly pro-Nationalist narrative onto the global stage. Here, the party narrative has highlighted the immediate aftermath of World War II, especially the November 1943 Cairo Conference. That meeting between Allied leaders Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Chiang Kai-shek receives far less attention amongWestern historians than do the earlier Atlantic Charter or the subsequent Allied meetings at Tehran and Yalta – none of which involved Chiang. Mitter sees some justice in Chinese pique at such neglect. ‘Few in the West have explored China’s wartime goals as seen through Chinese eyes’ (p. 28). In post-1980s Chinese narratives, China’s contributions both to the war effort and to the creation of a new post-WorldWar II global order constitute a key rationale for the PRC’s role in helping to shape the still emerging order of the post-Cold War world. AswithChinese public and cultural diplomacymore generally, these efforts have included awkward moments. An early poster for the 2015 movie, Cairo Declaration (dir. Wen Deguang and Hu Minggang), for example, featured Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin (neither of whom attended the conference), along with Roosevelt and Churchill. The film’s semi-fictionalized Roosevelt anticipates Xi Jinping’s China, declaring that ‘China’s war has changed the world. China is a responsible world power.’ Some readers may find helpful the author’s subtle application to his material of theories about vectors and circuits of memory. ‘Soft power’ will be familiar to more readers. Mitter offers occasional observations on contemporary politics beyond (though geopolitically related to) China, such as populism and internationalism. Finally, he includes numerous suggestive analogies – to civil wars in Spain and Greece, to the collaborationist Vichy government in France, to successive wars in Vietnam, to more stable memories of World War II in most Western nations – which might be fruitfully pursued in future scholarship.","PeriodicalId":45809,"journal":{"name":"China Information","volume":"35 1","pages":"442 - 444"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44582423","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-11-01DOI: 10.1177/0920203X211048290
Jeroen de Kloet, Jian Lin, Jueling Hu
In this article, we analyse the most popular stories that circulated on WeChat public accounts concerning personalized experiences of COVID-19 in China during the first three months of 2020. Among these non-fictional online writings, we probe into ‘individual’ and mediated experiences with the coronavirus in China by questioning the visualizations and discourses of these stories and their producers, as well as the concomitant emotions they invoked. Parallel to the changing situation of the pandemic, we observe a diachronic evolution of emotions, from fear and doubt to (nationalist) pride. While articulating personalized experiences of the pandemic from disparate perspectives, the stories invariably built on, and were shaped by, the workings of the WeChat public account platform (公众平台) as evidenced by its content moderation logic and political economy. The analysis shows that emotions, rather than facts, propel the popularity of these stories. The measures taken by the state are mostly applauded, and only sometimes questioned; tragic memories are rewritten, and a political and economic order is consolidated.
{"title":"The politics of emotion during COVID-19: Turning fear into pride in China's WeChat discourse","authors":"Jeroen de Kloet, Jian Lin, Jueling Hu","doi":"10.1177/0920203X211048290","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0920203X211048290","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, we analyse the most popular stories that circulated on WeChat public accounts concerning personalized experiences of COVID-19 in China during the first three months of 2020. Among these non-fictional online writings, we probe into ‘individual’ and mediated experiences with the coronavirus in China by questioning the visualizations and discourses of these stories and their producers, as well as the concomitant emotions they invoked. Parallel to the changing situation of the pandemic, we observe a diachronic evolution of emotions, from fear and doubt to (nationalist) pride. While articulating personalized experiences of the pandemic from disparate perspectives, the stories invariably built on, and were shaped by, the workings of the WeChat public account platform (公众平台) as evidenced by its content moderation logic and political economy. The analysis shows that emotions, rather than facts, propel the popularity of these stories. The measures taken by the state are mostly applauded, and only sometimes questioned; tragic memories are rewritten, and a political and economic order is consolidated.","PeriodicalId":45809,"journal":{"name":"China Information","volume":"35 1","pages":"366 - 392"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48044126","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-11-01DOI: 10.1177/0920203X211051055c
R. Yep
{"title":"Book Review: 《尷尬: 香港社會還未進入一國兩制的議題》 (Embarrassment: Hong Kong society has not entered into the discussion on ‘one country, two systems’) by Tai-Lok Lui 呂大樂","authors":"R. Yep","doi":"10.1177/0920203X211051055c","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0920203X211051055c","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45809,"journal":{"name":"China Information","volume":"35 1","pages":"446 - 447"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48741323","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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