China Scholarship Digest #28: October and November 2023 Publications
Articles published in October and November 2023
71 journals scanned
138 articles from 38 journals found
Chinese Studies
Journal of Contemporary China
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"Post-Mao reforms ranging from de-collectivization to the abolition of agricultural taxes have eroded the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) control over the rural periphery. However, with an agenda to strengthen the CCP’s all-around control over the economy and society, the Xi Jinping era saw a reversal of the long-term trend. We argue that Xi’s high-profile anti-poverty campaign from 2015 to 2020 consisted of massive Party building attempts and served as an important strategy for the Party to repenetrate the rural periphery...we show that by injecting human and financial resources into poverty regions, the CCP reinvigorated its previously underfunded and demoralized grassroots organs, expanded rural Party member recruitment, and enhanced the Party’s intervention in village affairs. Therefore, despite its seemingly economic nature, Xi’s anti-poverty campaign may lead to the long-lasting effect of Party power consolidation in the countryside. This finding suggests that authoritarian regimes can use campaigns with appealing policy goals to advance broader political agendas and enhance authoritarian resilience."
China Quarterly
- From Crowdfunding to Crowd Mobilization: The Impact of Digital Philanthropy on Grassroots Organizations and Local Politics in China
- Fandom Culture as a Catalyst for Propaganda
- Hong Kong Anti-colonial Nationalism during the Chinese Language Campaign
- Local Integration of Urban–Rural Social-assistance Programmes in China: What Are the Driving Forces? – CORRIGENDUM
- Job Preferences and Outcomes for China's College Graduates
- Operational Dilemmas and Cadre Education and Training at a County Party School in China
- Organizing Dots and Lines: Eastern Hui and the Adaptation of the CCP's Nationalities Work in the Revolutionary Era
- The Multilevel Politics of Government–Business Collaboration in China's Rural Poverty Alleviation
- Meritocracy, Suzhi Education and the Use of Live-Streaming Technology in Rural Schools in Western China
- “On the Centre–Periphery Borderline”: Educational Studies on/in Mainland China in the Global Context
- Urban Regeneration under National Land Use Control: Guangdong's “Three-Old” Redevelopment Programme
- The Old Conflict in the New Economy? Courier Resistance on Outsourcing Platforms in China
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"In contrast to Western platforms, which are dominated by crowdsourced labour, China's food-delivery platforms rely heavily on outsourced couriers to provide high-quality services. The conflicts emerging from outsourced labour relations have been inadequately examined. Based on extensive fieldwork in south China, this study reveals an intriguing fact: the outsourcing model frequently triggers yet largely conceals couriers’ strikes. This study uses the work regime approach and labour bargaining power theory to analyse the complex dynamics created by the platforms. By scrutinizing state institutions, relationships among various organizations and workplace interactions, this study finds that the platform firms have dominant power but that inherent tensions exist between outsourcing platform firms, outsourced agencies, human supervisors and workers, forming a regime that this study calls “contentious despotism.” Importantly, labour conflict is alive and potentially enduring in China's gigantic platform economy."
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"Many scholars have used local Chinese county gazetteers for historical and socioeconomic analyses, yet little research has examined the completeness of coverage or the biases in reporting that characterize the compilation of these gazetteers. In this paper, we provide a novel source for studying Chinese political movements and local history under the communist regime after 1949: the internal-discussion drafts of county gazetteers (xianzhi pingyigao)...we find evidence of serious data manipulation and a tendency to underreport historical events in the published editions. Our research evidently demonstrates the process of historiography editing and reveals how local history is presented through the lens of government public documents in China."
Modern China
China Information
China: An International Journal
- The Chinese Approach to Extraterritoriality
- Expressions of Interest in Politics in Authoritarian China
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"Even though the public's interest in politics is an indispensable element of civic culture and is also important for the practice of democratic citizenship, it has different and local meanings in an authoritarian regime. This article analyses the dynamics of the public's interest in politics since the Communist Party of China took power and investigates the characteristics of people who express an overt interest in politics in China. The results present a sophisticated and nuanced picture of the interactions between the Chinese government and its people in contemporary China. On the one hand, as modernisation theory has predicted, people with higher levels of education and higher socio-economic status have greater levels of interest in politics. On the other hand, the expression of interest in politics in China is observed among people who adhere to authoritarian values and those who trust the national government. Conversely, citizens who are dissatisfied with the level of democracy in the current regime report low levels of interest in politics. The findings have important implications for China's future political development."
- Personal Backgrounds, Constituency Demands and Policy Issues Raised by Deputies of China's National People's Congress
- Political Education and Children's Political Cognition in China
- Political Attitudes and National Identity of Mainland Chinese Migrants in Hong Kong
- Legal Judgements on the Employee Status of Platform Workers in China—A Combination of Legal Formalism and Pragmatism
- Blind Shaft Crimes: A Transient Phenomenon in Contemporary China
- "Afterlives" of the Danwei in 21st-century China: The Case of the University Sector
- Court–Government Interaction in the Context of Administrative Litigation and Competition Enforcement in China
- China–Asean Relations: July 2023 to September 2023: Chronology of Events
- China–Asean Relations July 2023 to September 2023: Important Documents
Asian Studies
Journal of Contemporary Asia
- Lost Opportunity: Local Councils and Grassroots Democracy Reforms after the Anti-Extradition Movement in Hong Kong
- Protests in Macao Under Chinese Sovereignty: Against the State or for the State?
- Environmental Advocacy in a Globalising China: Non-Governmental Organisation Engagement with the Green Belt and Road Initiative
Asian Studies Review
- Markets and the Development of Social Trust in the Everyday Politics of North Korea: Chinese Entrepreneurs’ Perspectives
- A Critical Discourse Analysis of Resistance to Climate Change in China’s English-Language News Media
- Caravan Modernity: The Strategic Revitalisation of China’s Dynastic Transportation System during the Second Sino–Japanese War
Contemporary Southeast Asia
- Introduction: Partnership or Polarization? Southeast Asian Security between India and China
- China and India's COVID-19 Vaccine Diplomacy and Health Security Partnerships in Southeast Asia
- Framing ASEAN's Cooperation with India and China over Myanmar Post-coup: A Strategic Resourcing Framework
- Status-seeking through Disaster Relief Cooperation: China and India in Southeast Asia
- Beyond Binaries: Southeast Asia's Maritime Security Cooperation with China and India
History
Economic History Review
- Rotating savings and credit associations (ROSCAs) in prewar China: Communal finance and the roots of economic development
- Communism and patricide: Collectivization and domestic violence in 1960s China
International Affairs
International Affairs
International Studies Quarterly
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"Anti-China protests have posed challenges to China's ambition to further expand its political and economic influence globally. How does Beijing respond to anti-China protests? And how do anti-China protests affect Beijing's use of public diplomatic resources? We address these questions by examining the effect of anti-China protests on China's public diplomatic engagement across low- and middle-income countries in Asia. We argue that anti-China protests lead to an increased level of non-financial public diplomatic engagement (e.g., elite visits) as well as financial engagement through foreign aid. We further argue that the effect of anti-China protests on increasing public diplomatic engagement is contingent on regime type. This is because China takes the anti-China message from autocracies more seriously given the higher political costs of participating in public protests in autocracies. Compared to democracies, autocracies are also in a better position to use anti-China protests as a means to signal their political constraints, compelling China to invest more public diplomatic resources for the countries."
Third World Quarterly
- Meso-level processes of intellectual imperialism: the disruption of intellectual lineage formation in modern Japan and China by ‘juniority effects’
- Development and national security: Indonesia’s Natuna Island and the South China Sea issue
- Indefinite healing: China’s ‘One Country, Two Systems’ formula over Hong Kong from a Daoist–Zhongyi perspective
Geopolitics
Cambridge Review of International Affairs
- Minding the gap: China contesting norms for public debt management?
- China’s search for the future to answer the past: Liu Cixin, (science-)fiction and Chinese developmentalism
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"This paper analyses Remembrance of Earth’s Past, also known as The Three-Body Trilogy, by Liu Cixin and its connections to Chinese politics and Historical IR. I examine how the Trilogy as a contemporary pop-cultural artefact and a fictional narrative sustains, recrafts and critically deals with the historical, conceived here as constructions of history, historical trajectories and the key historic challenges. I respond to the call of this special issue to consider new dimensions of how storytelling and Historical IR can be disruptive. On the theoretical level, I distinguish the notions of external and internal disruptions (critiques) with the help of pragmatism and post-colonialism. On the empirical level, I argue that the Trilogy offers an internal critique of China’s long-term obsession with developmentalist modernisation by expressing ironies and uncertainties of it. It reveals limits (‘selvedges’) of development(alism) by showing that it is ultimately unachievable, unnecessary and uncontrollable. In other words, the internal disruption stems from exposing the final frontiers of the given tradition where its internal logic starts to crumble."
Journal of Current Chinese Affairs
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"This study examines the Chinese party-state's reactions to the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, focusing on its response to the European Union (EU) and its own population during the first six months of the war's outbreak. Drawing on actor-centred institutionalism, it analyses institutional changes and political steering actions by Chinese party-state actors, a perspective that has rarely been applied to China's foreign policy. The “explaining-outcome process tracing” method was applied to reconstruct political processes and interactions between actors based on extensive document and secondary data analysis. Findings reveal that the EU and its partners warned Chinese leaders not to help the Russian government evade sanctions. In this modified institutional setting, the Chinese party-state has responded with “soft” discursive steering towards the EU and, in addition to this “soft” element, with targeted “hard” steering actions towards its own population. While the political steering towards the EU has failed, the steering towards its own population seems to have been partially successful."
- A Bumpy Ride for China’s Belt and Road Initiative in Kazakhstan: Findings from a University Survey
- Slogans, Pragmatism, and Crisis Response at the Grassroots Level: An Analysis of Anti-Coronavirus Disease 2019 (Anti-COVID-19) Slogans in China
Chinese Journal of International Politics
- How China Perceives European Strategic Autonomy: Asymmetric Expectations and Pragmatic Engagement
- Normative Overlaps between China and the Liberal International Society: China’s Developmentalist Human Rights
- Polarity and Strategic Competition: A Structural Explanation of Renewed Great Power Rivalry
Australian Journal of International Affairs
Review of International Political Economy
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Politics
Comparative Political Studies
Society & Culture
Global Media and China
- Aging in cyberspace: Exploring health information acquisition among older WeChat users
- If it is bad, why don’t I quit? Algorithmic recommendation use strategy from folk theories
- A decolonial analysis of Lolita dressing practice and fashion in Mainland China
Media, Culture & Society
Chinese Sociological Review
- Who cares? Childcare support and women’s labor supply in Hong Kong
- Defending the hospital or supporting the complainant: morality in medical disputes
Chinese Journal of Communication
- The Great Tech Rivalry: China versus the U.S.
- Who politicized the COVID-19 pandemic on Twitter: cultural identity and Chinese prejudice in a virtual community
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"This research, using the cultural-identity-protective cognition theory and focusing on China as a case study, aims to identify influencers, track information dissemination processes, and recognize the patterns of information and emotional flows within Twitter conversations related to the politicization of the COVID-19 pandemic...Both influencers and general users had the capacity to steer Twitter conversations into the political realm, thus contributing to the politicization and polarization of discussions during the information flow. Notably, opinion leaders, especially among influencers, could politicize and polarize a conversation by initially indicating their political standing in the tweet. In general, Twitter users had the ability to make neutral and objective news information go viral if a large number of Twitter users continue the politicization and polarization processes. Group membership—specifically, political standing—and cultural identities played significant roles in perpetuating a vicious cycle of anger. This cycle amplified identity threats for Twitter users and prompted more prejudicial and polarized comments, especially when China, Chinese people, and the Chinese government were the subjects of blame in the Twitter community."
- After “BAT,” What? Reimagining the internet for social development in post-crisis China
- Unraveling China’s digital traces: evaluating communication scholarship through a sociotechnical lens
- From industrial movies to social media discourses: alternative social imaginaries of industry and technology in China
- Feeling ambivalent while using instant messaging: a value-motive-experience framework comparing maximizers and social groomers
Economics
The Chinese Economy
- The Crowding-Out Effect of ESG Practices on Social Welfare: Evidence from China
- How Does International Education Exchange Affect China’s Exports? Evidence 54 Countries along the “Belt and Road” in 2007–2018
- Transfer or Surrender Rural Homestead Land? An Investigation of farmers’ Preferences in China
- Do Backbone High-Speed Rails Widen the North-South Gap in China?
- Premature Deindustrialization or Reindustrialization in China’s Latecomer Provinces
China Economic Journal
- Tests of goods market integration between China and European countries: a nonlinear nonparametric approach
- The valuation effect of going International: evidence from QDII in China
Journal of Chinese Economic and Business Studies
- Digital Entrepreneurship and growth-oriented performance: commercialisation narrative of SMEs in the ICT sector in China
- Do methods of estimation matter in detecting outliers and forecasting macroeconomic variables?
- Impact of fintech usages on financial inclusion initiatives: perspective from Urban slum dwellers of Uttarakhand
- The role of Renminbi internationalization in China’s petroleum security: a causal analysis amidst global uncertainties
- Time-frequency nexus between COVID-19, economic policy uncertainty and China’s stock market during the COVID-19 period
China & World Economy
- Can Monetary Policy Undo Asset-freezing Sanctions?
- Valuation Effects of US–China Trade Conflict: The Role of Institutional Investors
- The Role of Collateral in Sudden Stop Models
- Media Inclination and Outward Foreign Direct Investment: Evidence from Chinese Firms
- Capital Account Liberalization and International Corporate Bond Issuance: Transaction-level Evidence from China
- Earnings Management of Chinese Listed Multinational Corporations
China Economic Review
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"Social capital and the Chinese concept of guanxi (connections) can be used to explain changes in income inequality; however, their connotations differ. Previous studies identify social networks as an important factor influencing income inequality in China but ignore the distinction between social capital and guanxi. Using data from the Chinese General Social Survey, this study demonstrates that guanxi contributes to income inequality while social capital improves it. This conclusion still holds true after a series of robustness tests are conducted. Further results demonstrate that the effects of social capital and guanxi on income inequality are substitutable, and social capital can inhibit the role of guanxi in worsening income inequality. Thus, our results confirm that social capital contributes to improving income inequality, providing a new policy perspective for China to formulate income distribution policies."
- Narrow framing and under-diversification: Empirical evidence from Chinese households
- Reshaping unfairness perceptions: Evidence from China's Hukou reform
- Place-based polices and e-commerce development in rural China
- Has the digital economy improved the consumption of poor and subsistence households?
- Electrification and economic growth: Evidence from china's rural primary electrification program
- On the origin of cognition: How childhood conditions shape cognitive function in old age
- Theories of reasoning and focal point play with a matched non-student sample
- Do firms benefit from public information services: Evidence from a tax hotline program in China
- The income redistribution effect of social security in China
- Trade and peace: The WTO case
- Tax competition among local governments: Evidence from the spillovers of location-based tax incentives in China
- Air pollution and agricultural labor supply: Evidence from China
- Bridging the gap: Assessing the effects of railway infrastructure investments in Northwest China
- City size and the employment of female migrant workers in the service sector: Evidence from urban China
- Parents' early experience and children's years of schooling: The long-term impact of son preference
Asia Pacific Business Review
- Ecosystem-oriented business model design: a multi-case comparative analysis based on Chinese e-commerce enterprises
- Digitalization of business models, knowledge management and green technology innovation of Chinese manufacturing enterprises: a mixed analysis based on the Haier COSMOPlat ecosystem
- Impacts of regulatory strategies on member’s knowledge sharing in virtual brand communities based on ecosystem-oriented business models in China
- Organizational unlearning and service innovation of Chinese service-oriented firms: the moderating role of knowledge integration
- Leave or not to leave? The impact of managerial work-life support and work engagement on the outcomes of work-to-life conflict for China’s new generation employees
Journal of Asian Economics
- Foreign M&A and inventory adjustment: Evidence from Chinese manufacturers
- Flying high in the sky: The airports decentralization reform and regional economic development in China
- Time-varying and spillover effects of the macroeconomy on nonfinancial corporate financialization: Evidence from China
- Does China’s market opening eased its trade partners’ domestic conflicts? – Evidence from China’s WTO accession
- Global value chain upgrading effect of foreign capital withdrawal: Evidence from Chinese firms
- Industrial policy and resident health: Historical evidence from China’s Third Front construction
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"Understanding the impact of industrial policies on residents’ health is of great significance. This study uses the large-scale national defense industry policy entitled the Third Front construction, which was implemented before China’s reform and opening up, as a quasi-natural experiment to empirically examine its long-term impact on residents’ health. The relevant findings are fourfold. (1) The policy significantly improves local residents’ health in the long term. (2) This improvement effect primarily operated through two channels of increasing residents’ income and improving medical security. (3) The effect is obviously heterogeneous for different genders and hukou, with a greater effect on men than women and significant health improvement effects for residents with agricultural hukou. (4) The findings demonstrate that local residents’ lifestyles and mental health were significantly improved due to Third Front construction."
- Impact of subsidized distribution on follow-up uptake of vision health services for rural students: A field experiment in China
- Trade with innovation benefits: A re-appraisal using microdata from China
Journal of the Asia Pacific Economy
- Guangdong – Hong Kong – Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA): economic progress, diversification, and convergence
- ESG scoring and forecasting in China: advancing sustainable business with multidimensional modeling
- The factors affecting rural residents’ willingness to burden-share costs of local infrastructure supply in developing countries: evidence from China
- Exploring precise poverty alleviation policies based on causal inference: a case study from China
Journal of Development Economics
- Health policy, price regulation, and innovation: Evidence from China’s vaccine industry
- Inter-regional barriers and economic growth: Evidence from China
- Place-based policies, rural employment, and intra-household resources allocation: Evidence from China’s economic zones
- Rural road stimulus and the role of matching mandates on economic recovery in China
- Risk, arbitrage, and spatial price relationships: Insights from China's hog market under the African Swine Fever
Pacific Economic Review
International Studies of Economics
Misc
The International Journal of Human Rights
Information, Communication & Society
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"Visual political communication in the social media sphere is increasingly valuable for its ability to more effectively persuade viewers in this increasingly cluttered media landscape. Using multi-model discourse analysis and following the theoretical framework of Everyday Politics, this study focuses on a random sample (N = 200) of user-generated Internet memes from Chinese national youth propaganda campaign Youth Study. In addition, the author observed the sharing and dissemination of these memes in online public discussions. The findings reveal that young participants maintain a varying distance from politics. They employ strategies such as dark humor, hyperbole, contrast, and appropriation of pop culture to portray two key roles – the charming, brilliant followers and the abandoned, hunted breakers, and to construct four main scenarios-cute threat, humble beg, funny politics, and veiled resistance. This politicized propaganda campaign is being transformed from state aspirations to the creative daily cultural consumption of young netizens. This analysis contributes to the scholarly literature on youth subcultures, political mobilization, and visual propaganda in post-socialist China."
Sources
Security Studies, Journal of Public Affairs, Economic History Review, Journal of Contemporary Asia, Chinese Sociological Review, China Information, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Journal of Strategic Studies, Journal of Current Chinese Affairs, Asia Pacific Business Review, Economic and Political Studies, Information, Communication & Society, International Journal of Cultural Policy, International Studies Quarterly, China Review, China: An International Journal, Media, Culture & Society, China Economic Journal, Chinese Journal of Communication, Journal of Asian Economics, Journal of Development Economics, American Journal of Political Science, China Quarterly, International Studies Review, Territory, Politics, Governance, China Economic Review, Contemporary Southeast Asia, The Pacific Review, The RUSI Journal, Journal of Chinese Economic and Business Studies, Asian Studies Review, Asian Security, International Organization, Geopolitics, Political Communication, European Journal of International Relations, Twentieth-Century China, Comparative Political Studies, Survival, Review of International Political Economy, Chinese Studies in History, The China Journal, American Historical Review, Australian Journal of International Affairs, Modern China, The International Journal of Human Rights, Journal of Modern Chinese History, International Affairs, The Chinese Economy, Journal of Politics, The Chinese Historical Review, Contemporary Security Policy, Journal of Democracy, Global Media and China, International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, Pacific Economic Review, Journal of Contemporary China, Chinese Journal of International Politics, Journal of Chinese Governance, Asian Economic Policy Review, International Studies of Economics, Journal of Economic History, Comparative Strategy, Social Sciences in China, Asia Policy, Critical Asian Studies, Defence and Peace Economics, Journal of the Asia Pacific Economy, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Third World Quarterly