Pub Date : 2021-11-01DOI: 10.1177/0920203X211051055b
Ying-ho Kwong
world. In general, the book serves as an elaborate descriptive guide to the latest advances of the fintech industry in China by reviewing up-to-date literature on the subject and providing evidence from relevant secondary sources. The authors’ expertise in the field also allows for pertinent analyses of the main trends including the disruptive power of fintech on traditional financial systems and the ensuing changes occurring within the industry. Nonetheless, the fintech industry is still in its infancy and is changing at an everfaster pace. Therefore, the book would have benefited from a more analytical approach on specific issues, for instance, a richer historical and theoretical overview that identifies institutional trends and events (i.e. global financialization) that have led to certain disproportionate developments in the industry’s technologies. Furthermore, it would have been valuable to include a more elaborate comparative approach to Western developments in the fintech industry and recognize how global competition has influenced the development path of fintech in China and vice versa. The book is recommended for scholars who are interested in China’s fintech industry and modern banking sector, the Chinese economy, Chinese technological innovations, and the rise of global financial technology, especially those whose access to relevant information is limited to non-Chinese sources.
{"title":"Book Review: Dying for an iPhone: Apple, Foxconn, and the Lives of China's Workers by Jenny Chan, Mark Selden, and Pun Ngai","authors":"Ying-ho Kwong","doi":"10.1177/0920203X211051055b","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0920203X211051055b","url":null,"abstract":"world. In general, the book serves as an elaborate descriptive guide to the latest advances of the fintech industry in China by reviewing up-to-date literature on the subject and providing evidence from relevant secondary sources. The authors’ expertise in the field also allows for pertinent analyses of the main trends including the disruptive power of fintech on traditional financial systems and the ensuing changes occurring within the industry. Nonetheless, the fintech industry is still in its infancy and is changing at an everfaster pace. Therefore, the book would have benefited from a more analytical approach on specific issues, for instance, a richer historical and theoretical overview that identifies institutional trends and events (i.e. global financialization) that have led to certain disproportionate developments in the industry’s technologies. Furthermore, it would have been valuable to include a more elaborate comparative approach to Western developments in the fintech industry and recognize how global competition has influenced the development path of fintech in China and vice versa. The book is recommended for scholars who are interested in China’s fintech industry and modern banking sector, the Chinese economy, Chinese technological innovations, and the rise of global financial technology, especially those whose access to relevant information is limited to non-Chinese sources.","PeriodicalId":45809,"journal":{"name":"China Information","volume":"35 1","pages":"444 - 445"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45047435","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: 10.1177/0920203X211051057
Jeroen de Kloet
How can we combat the invisible – a virus one can only see with the aid of sophisticated equipment? A virus that has nevertheless managed to put the world on hold, freeze our travelling, and a virus that has killed, at the time of writing – July 2021 – over 4 million people worldwide. A virus, moreover, whose first recorded outbreak started in mainland China at the end of 2019. What seemed like yet another local health crisis soon morphed into a global pandemic. Since the start of the pandemic, China’s role has shifted. Initially, China was the assumed ‘origin’ of the pandemic, and was criticized for its secretive attitude about the source and spread of the virus. Soon after, China’s draconian measures to combat the virus were met with suspicion elsewhere, in particular in the Western media, and were read as a sign of its authoritative regime. Yet, within the timespan of a few months, China’s virus management scored containment successes that overshadowed those of Europe and the United States, feeding internally into a discourse of nationalism in which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was praised by its citizenry as the guardian of the nation. When I considered editing a special issue on the pandemic during the summer of 2020, I had doubts: was it not too much like capitalizing on the contemporary, turning a crisis into a publication opportunity? And what more could be said about COVID-19, given the sheer abundance of both journalistic and academic discourses surrounding the pandemic? However, in the words of John Nguyet Erni and Ted Striphas,
{"title":"COVID-19 in China: Imagination and deep mediatization","authors":"Jeroen de Kloet","doi":"10.1177/0920203X211051057","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0920203X211051057","url":null,"abstract":"How can we combat the invisible – a virus one can only see with the aid of sophisticated equipment? A virus that has nevertheless managed to put the world on hold, freeze our travelling, and a virus that has killed, at the time of writing – July 2021 – over 4 million people worldwide. A virus, moreover, whose first recorded outbreak started in mainland China at the end of 2019. What seemed like yet another local health crisis soon morphed into a global pandemic. Since the start of the pandemic, China’s role has shifted. Initially, China was the assumed ‘origin’ of the pandemic, and was criticized for its secretive attitude about the source and spread of the virus. Soon after, China’s draconian measures to combat the virus were met with suspicion elsewhere, in particular in the Western media, and were read as a sign of its authoritative regime. Yet, within the timespan of a few months, China’s virus management scored containment successes that overshadowed those of Europe and the United States, feeding internally into a discourse of nationalism in which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was praised by its citizenry as the guardian of the nation. When I considered editing a special issue on the pandemic during the summer of 2020, I had doubts: was it not too much like capitalizing on the contemporary, turning a crisis into a publication opportunity? And what more could be said about COVID-19, given the sheer abundance of both journalistic and academic discourses surrounding the pandemic? However, in the words of John Nguyet Erni and Ted Striphas,","PeriodicalId":45809,"journal":{"name":"China Information","volume":"88 1","pages":"265 - 273"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"65551645","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: 10.1177/0920203X211051055
Norton Wheeler
{"title":"Book Review: China's Good War: How World War II Is Shaping a New Nationalism by Rana Mitter","authors":"Norton Wheeler","doi":"10.1177/0920203X211051055","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0920203X211051055","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45809,"journal":{"name":"China Information","volume":"35 1","pages":"441 - 442"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45970285","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: 10.1177/0920203X211051055d
Kala Seetharam Sridhar
China domestically and internationally on its approach towards one country, two systems. Nobody could have foreseen the meteoric pace of growth of China’s economy by the time Hong Kong’s future was resolved in the 1980s. Even the most far-sighted observers during the transition period could not have envisaged the threat of an unabated flow of consumers and tourists to Hong Kong and their disruptive impact on the local supply of services and goods, for example. The twists and turns of China’s marketization process were also beyond our imagination. While the majority did not expect China’s marketization trajectory to be a linear process, few foresaw the return of the statist approach from the late 1990s onwards. In the face of the threat of economic federalism in the domestic scene and the challenge of global financial crises, the party leadership has resumed its proclivity towards recentralization and control. The domination of mega state-controlled enterprise groups as the champions of the national economy today attests to the ‘return of the state’. The rise of a new king in Xi Jinping has simply reinforced the trend. The unprecedented economic power together with the renewal of the statist approach have altered the landscape where Hong Kong interacts and ‘bargains’ with the sovereign. The rapid rise of China has also met with a powerful pushback from the rest of world, and the Trump administration simply epitomized the general uneasiness with China’s ascendance. The siege mentality of ‘the world against us’ of the Chinese leaders, to a large extent, accounts for the overreaction to the ‘threat to national security’ emerging in Hong Kong. Sadly, the fate of Hong Kong has always been shaped by the logic of Chinese politics and the whims of the sovereign. The book however offers no pointers on how to move forward the important debate on putting one country, two systems back on the right track. Nevertheless, notwithstanding the general frustration and despondency of the local community with the current predicament and its distrust of the communist regime, the central message of the book remains too important to overlook. That is, despite all the noise about independence and overwhelming international concern, one country, two systems may still be the only option of institutional arrangement for Hong Kong in the foreseeable future. Like it or not, Hong Kong people have to find a way to make it work.
{"title":"Book Review: Governing the Urban in China and India: Land Grabs, Slum Clearance, and War on Air Pollution by Xuefei Ren","authors":"Kala Seetharam Sridhar","doi":"10.1177/0920203X211051055d","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0920203X211051055d","url":null,"abstract":"China domestically and internationally on its approach towards one country, two systems. Nobody could have foreseen the meteoric pace of growth of China’s economy by the time Hong Kong’s future was resolved in the 1980s. Even the most far-sighted observers during the transition period could not have envisaged the threat of an unabated flow of consumers and tourists to Hong Kong and their disruptive impact on the local supply of services and goods, for example. The twists and turns of China’s marketization process were also beyond our imagination. While the majority did not expect China’s marketization trajectory to be a linear process, few foresaw the return of the statist approach from the late 1990s onwards. In the face of the threat of economic federalism in the domestic scene and the challenge of global financial crises, the party leadership has resumed its proclivity towards recentralization and control. The domination of mega state-controlled enterprise groups as the champions of the national economy today attests to the ‘return of the state’. The rise of a new king in Xi Jinping has simply reinforced the trend. The unprecedented economic power together with the renewal of the statist approach have altered the landscape where Hong Kong interacts and ‘bargains’ with the sovereign. The rapid rise of China has also met with a powerful pushback from the rest of world, and the Trump administration simply epitomized the general uneasiness with China’s ascendance. The siege mentality of ‘the world against us’ of the Chinese leaders, to a large extent, accounts for the overreaction to the ‘threat to national security’ emerging in Hong Kong. Sadly, the fate of Hong Kong has always been shaped by the logic of Chinese politics and the whims of the sovereign. The book however offers no pointers on how to move forward the important debate on putting one country, two systems back on the right track. Nevertheless, notwithstanding the general frustration and despondency of the local community with the current predicament and its distrust of the communist regime, the central message of the book remains too important to overlook. That is, despite all the noise about independence and overwhelming international concern, one country, two systems may still be the only option of institutional arrangement for Hong Kong in the foreseeable future. Like it or not, Hong Kong people have to find a way to make it work.","PeriodicalId":45809,"journal":{"name":"China Information","volume":"35 1","pages":"447 - 449"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46692139","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: 10.1177/0920203X211051055h
Zhixi Wang
that the contentious political meaning making transpires. The photo is an odd bird. In many ways it is the closest we come to a reproduction of the ‘real’, and yet we know it also as doctored and manipulated. Like the negatives through which the title shifts, the photo-forms dissected in this compelling work on visuality speak both to repression and visibility, inadmissible and unsayable but also publicly articulatable. While Hillenbrand does not use the term, we see how the photo-forms emerge as a marker and space of the liminal. While liminal spaces indicate transitions and rites of passage, they are also spaces of power – above, beyond, and outside of time and place. Hillenbrand shows us how critique is made possible through their presence.
{"title":"Book Review: Saving the Nation: Chinese Protestant Elites and the Quest to Build a New China, 1922–1952 by Thomas H. Reilly","authors":"Zhixi Wang","doi":"10.1177/0920203X211051055h","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0920203X211051055h","url":null,"abstract":"that the contentious political meaning making transpires. The photo is an odd bird. In many ways it is the closest we come to a reproduction of the ‘real’, and yet we know it also as doctored and manipulated. Like the negatives through which the title shifts, the photo-forms dissected in this compelling work on visuality speak both to repression and visibility, inadmissible and unsayable but also publicly articulatable. While Hillenbrand does not use the term, we see how the photo-forms emerge as a marker and space of the liminal. While liminal spaces indicate transitions and rites of passage, they are also spaces of power – above, beyond, and outside of time and place. Hillenbrand shows us how critique is made possible through their presence.","PeriodicalId":45809,"journal":{"name":"China Information","volume":"35 1","pages":"453 - 454"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41385748","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: 10.1177/0920203x211051055e
Susanne Weigelin-Schwiedrzik
{"title":"Book Review: Maos langer Schatten: Chinas Umgang mit der Vergangenheit by Daniel Leese","authors":"Susanne Weigelin-Schwiedrzik","doi":"10.1177/0920203x211051055e","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0920203x211051055e","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45809,"journal":{"name":"China Information","volume":"35 1","pages":"449 - 451"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48328271","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: 10.1177/0920203X211051055k
Norbert Francis
{"title":"Book Review: The Great Exodus from China: Trauma, Memory, and Identity in Modern Taiwan by Dominic Meng-Hsuan Yang","authors":"Norbert Francis","doi":"10.1177/0920203X211051055k","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0920203X211051055k","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45809,"journal":{"name":"China Information","volume":"35 1","pages":"454 - 456"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47663609","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: 10.1177/0920203X211051055g
Jennifer Hubbert
{"title":"Book Review: Negative Exposures: Knowing What Not to Know in Contemporary China by Margaret Hillenbrand","authors":"Jennifer Hubbert","doi":"10.1177/0920203X211051055g","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0920203X211051055g","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45809,"journal":{"name":"China Information","volume":"35 1","pages":"451 - 453"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42357199","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: 10.1177/0920203X211051055l
Yikun Zhao
mainland. This differentiation helps to explain a partial convergence on vital questions of national sovereignty between the two major tendencies in the Taiwanese population as a whole that orient, on the one hand, toward the ‘blue camp’ (led by the Kuomintang) and, on the other hand, toward the ‘green camp’ (led by the Democratic Progressive Party). With Hong Kong in full view, only about one in 10 respondents in opinion surveys favour the ‘one country, two systems’ alternative, reflected in broad approval for President Tsai’s second term. During the years covered in the concluding sections of the study, self-identification as ‘Taiwanese-only’ has risen significantly from a small minority during the 1990s to a large majority today. Discussion of the evolution of literary trends and cultural activities focused on émigrés’ memory of China in Chapter 3, and subsequent disenchantment (Chapter 4), traces an interesting parallel to this shift in awareness. All of the above confirms the analysis and vision of the author. One outcome might be that the anachronism of the outsider–native dichotomy will soon be evident among the new generations, becoming categories (still sometimes termed ‘ethnic’) of historic interest only.
{"title":"Book Review: Unending Capitalism: How Consumerism Negated China's Communist Revolution by Karl Gerth","authors":"Yikun Zhao","doi":"10.1177/0920203X211051055l","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0920203X211051055l","url":null,"abstract":"mainland. This differentiation helps to explain a partial convergence on vital questions of national sovereignty between the two major tendencies in the Taiwanese population as a whole that orient, on the one hand, toward the ‘blue camp’ (led by the Kuomintang) and, on the other hand, toward the ‘green camp’ (led by the Democratic Progressive Party). With Hong Kong in full view, only about one in 10 respondents in opinion surveys favour the ‘one country, two systems’ alternative, reflected in broad approval for President Tsai’s second term. During the years covered in the concluding sections of the study, self-identification as ‘Taiwanese-only’ has risen significantly from a small minority during the 1990s to a large majority today. Discussion of the evolution of literary trends and cultural activities focused on émigrés’ memory of China in Chapter 3, and subsequent disenchantment (Chapter 4), traces an interesting parallel to this shift in awareness. All of the above confirms the analysis and vision of the author. One outcome might be that the anachronism of the outsider–native dichotomy will soon be evident among the new generations, becoming categories (still sometimes termed ‘ethnic’) of historic interest only.","PeriodicalId":45809,"journal":{"name":"China Information","volume":"35 1","pages":"456 - 457"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47496563","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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