Asia Pacific Viewpoint最新文献

In order to improve local governance, the central government has, among other strategies, begun to introduce institutions for deliberation in rural China. This article analyses the implementation and consequences of this framework in two villages in rural Gansu Province. It shows that the current promotion of these institutions is a top-down political effort and not a system with genuine local roots. Our findings also suggest that without strict legal requirements for deliberative institutions, village cadres do not follow the enactment of officially warranted procedures, which often may lead to rather formalistic implementation. Opportunities for deliberation seem to be offered only to those members of the community who are the most likely to be able to contribute social or financial capital to the local administration's agenda. This suggests that at least in this local setting, the rationale of introducing deliberation institutions clearly was to improve existing policy implementation and not to provide meaningful new avenues for participation. While this variant of deliberative institutions further raises the status of the rural elite, it appears to frustrate ordinary villagers and reduce their interest in these instruments.

The literature has long recognised non-democratic regimes that are increasingly using Internet manipulation to undermine the opposition. Apart from network control, content surveillance and paying for Internet commentators, the implications of the new trend of online counter-mobilisation remain to be explored. By analysing 5124 YouTube videos of Hong Kong's Anti-extradition Bill Protests, this study examines how pro-regime opinion leaders counter-mobilised pro-regime contents and Internet users responded to their videos. The results indicate that the main concern of the pro-regime opinion leaders was to (i) demobilise the protests, (ii) condemn opposition figures and (iii) show their support for the authorities. Users were mainly participative in videos related to (i) justify suppression, (ii) support for front-line police officers against protesters and (iii) criticism of the opposition. These differences reflect the apparent asymmetry between opinion leaders, who provide more negative contents, and followers, who have better responses to positively framed contents. The findings further contribute to exploring the strategies of the pro-regime counter-framing to overcome the challenges of the opposition camp.

This study explores the appropriation and distribution of surplus in caterpillar fungus collection in Qinghai using a diverse economies of surplus approach. Ethnographic fieldwork included semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, oral histories and participant observations during collection. Findings suggest that one particular enterprise type, with more typically capitalist features has come to dominate caterpillar fungus collection in Qinghai. The surplus appropriation and distribution in this enterprise poses problems for rural farmer collectors in terms of insecure incomes and stringent working conditions that deprive them of their dignity of labour. This study suggests a rethink of surplus appropriation and distribution based on culturally valued dignity of labour to design more sustainable and equitable livelihood within and beyond the dominant model.

Since the late 1970s, China has gradually risen as a global power, which culminates in the present moment when large-scale geopolitical and economic ventures such as the Belt and Road Initiative have generated diversified cross-border connections. This is most forcefully felt in the Chinese diaspora, and particularly those in Southeast Asia since the region is home to the largest and most diverse diasporic Chinese population. Chinese voluntary associations (CVAs), as crucial social institutions in the Chinese diaspora, are actively engaging with China's rise and responding to the (trans) regional political-economic and socio-cultural changes. In this introduction of the special section, we open up a collection of five research articles and one commentary that discuss the ambivalences and tensions in CVAs’ engagement with China's rise. We conceptualize CVAs as ever-evolving ancestral communities which actively (re)position themselves in relation to complex configurations of power dynamics taking place between actors in China and the Chinese diaspora. Ancestral communities evolve through a constant mediation of the two mutually-constitutive processes of transnationalization and localization, which take on dual-facing and double-embedded orientations. This special section also highlights the continuing significance and renewed engagement of CVAs and potential tensions and conflicts generated in changing geopolitical and domestic environment.

China is often considered as motivated by a desire to challenge the international status quo, a challenge the West is trying to mitigate. Social constructivists account for this challenge via a norm of nationalistic assertiveness in Chinese foreign policy; a norm constructed in the synergetic relationship between China's Communist Party and its nationalist movement. However, this work argues that Chinese foreign policy is motivated, in part, by nationalist pressure arising from an antagonistically symbiotic relationship between the Communist Party and China's nationalist movement. This understanding is significant as it indicates that western policies are paradoxically factoring in the emergence of a challenger China. © 2023 Victoria University of Wellington and John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd.

In this research note, I expand the discussion on multicultural policies in East Asia by proposing the concept of ‘geopolitical multiculturalism’. It describes that the receiving state promotes multiculturalism or pro-immigrant programmes and discourses to enhance the nation's global standing, regional importance, economic development, and geopolitical security. East Asian countries serve as illustrative examples of this concept, as their substantial immigrant populations are relatively recent, and the development of multicultural programmes is closely tied to international influence. I will first elaborate on three approaches to geopolitical multiculturalism, followed by a detailed analysis of Taiwan's case, including the recent implementation of the New Southbound Policy. I draw conclusions regarding the implications and potential applications of this concept for future research.

Originated in southern China, nanyin (南音) is regarded as ‘the sound of motherland’ (乡音) performed and loved by the Hokkien dialect speakers in Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and diasporic populations living in Southeast Asia. Having thrived in transnational spaces, nanyin is now celebrated as a shared heritage in China and Southeast Asian countries, such as Singapore. This paper explores the process of heritage-making, that is, the ways in which the art form and cultural practice of nanyin have been re-shaped and re-appropriated by the diasporic communities and the native place to articulate different understandings of the Chinese identity in their distinct nation-state frameworks. In this ambivalent entanglement, China has re-appropriated the diasporic history of nanyin to gain international recognition and build soft power through United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. In Singapore, the Siong Leng Music Association has actively engaged in the heritage-making of nanyin, leading to the creation of a unique Singapore brand that speaks to hybridity and cosmopolitanism, in the same way as the re-construction of their Chinese identity. Examining the two processes of heritagisation of nanyin along the China-Singapore ‘heritage corridors’, the paper argues that the two ends are connected in important ways but always seek to maintain distance to articulate their own cultural representations at international stages. Thus, nanyin through a comparative perspective enables a critical examination of issues of centre versus periphery, authenticity, and hybridity in the Sinophone world.

Women are under-represented in Indonesian legislatures, and those women who are elected are disproportionately from ‘elite’ backgrounds. This research sought to understand the conditions for women to succeed in politics in conditions of patriarchy and clientelist politics. Research in North Sumatera, Indonesia, revealed that many women did not make the conscious decision not to enter politics, but rather found that they had not established the required preconditions earlier enough in life. Patriarchal social norms and a transactional political culture frustrate women's ability to acquire these conditions, yet they are also subject to change. Interviews with women elected representatives and women who had never contested an election revealed three sites that are critical to women either acquiring the preconditions to contest elections, or frustrating that pathway: the household, the ‘community’ and religious/ethnic associations. We demonstrate how women's actions in these sites transform the conditions to make them more conducive to women's political participation.

This paper examines how Chinese transnational investments, as (re)framed in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), contribute to changes in urbanisation processes in Southeast Asia. On the ground, the BRI becomes contextualised and intersects with local and national development trajectories. The growing presence of Chinese actors in the region intensifies urban dynamics, especially in secondary cities and emerging urban sites, where the BRI is used as a lever for local internationalisation strategies. The heterogeneous nature of the links between the BRI and various large urban projects is demonstrated on the basis of case studies involving changing consortia of private and public Chinese and Southeast Asian actors. A regional approach allows us to identify connections and shared processes across Southeast Asian countries. It provides a historically grounded understanding of how the BRI incorporates long-term interactions with China and more recent partnerships in Southeast Asian countries. The paper paves the way for a research agenda that contests the image of China as a monolithic actor implementing the BRI uniformly and consistently. Further analyses are needed to examine systems and networks of actors as well as the local urban politics that affect the BRI on the ground.

With an increasingly assertive China and the intensifying influence of the Sinocentre, Chinese overseas who have access to Chineseness can exercise their agentic power in using their cultural capital for economic gains. Beijing has recognised the potential for diasporic Chinese entrepreneurs to contribute to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) given their influence in Southeast Asia's economy. Correspondingly, these entrepreneurs hail the BRI as a strategic opportunity for them to turn their cultural capital into fiscal capital. Considering the increased global connectivity and new Chinese migration geographies led by the BRI, this article examines the case of Chinese business associations in Brunei Darussalam. The heterogenous responses of these ethnic Chinese and their associations to China and the BRI attest to the multiplicity and contestations of Chineseness based on different migration histories and sentiments to their ancestral land. We focus on the dynamics between the old Chinese Bruneian business elites and the more recent Chinese business migrants from Malaysia and China. An investigation of the cultural and economic politics within the Chinese Bruneian business community will provide insights into the modality of Chineseness as an economic asset that can be tactically used by diasporic Chinese entrepreneurs to maintain their social position and to respond to China's economic rise.