China Borderlands Research Articles

Where national identity is contested: consciousness of nation–state among minority communities in the Vietnam–China borderlands

ABSTRACT Borderlands in Southeast Asia have long been considered marginalised spaces occupied by populations that assign greater significance to ethnic solidarity than national consciousness. To date, research has largely highlighted the social dynamics of frontier communities in the context of the recent economic boom and transnational interactions, yet few examine national consciousness. Drawing on a survey conducted with four minority communities in the Vietnam – China borderland, this article investigates nation – state consciousness through perspectives on border and territory sovereignty, citizens’ responsibility in Vietnamese nation building, and in understanding and employing national symbols. We suggest that local minorities’ national consciousness has increased significantly since the 1980s. However, expressed attachments to national identity varied according to ethnicity, gender and age. To enhance consciousness of the nation – state, it is important to make the nation-building project relevant to minorities through education and propaganda, but also through more effective implementation of the state’s development policies.

Old stereotypes and new openness: discourses and practices of trans-border re- and disconnection in south-eastern Kazakhstan’s agricultural sector

ABSTRACT Since the Soviet breakup, rural communities in the Kazakhstan–China borderlands have faced cataclysmic social, economic, and ecological transformations. Collective and state farms have been replaced by precarious smallholder agriculture suffering from a decline in financial inputs and the deterioration of infrastructure. At the same time, dynamic transformations of border permeability (and trans-border reconnections) between Kazakhstan and China have challenged the until relatively recent widespread Soviet rhetoric on Western China (or rather Xinjiang) as an underdeveloped space across the border. This article is based on several months of fieldwork between 2019 and 2021 in Panfilov District, located at major cross-border road and railway intersections and hosting important infrastructural objects, such as a dry port, a major railway transhipment hub, and a trans-border special economic zone. The article explores how the border situation (and the border’s changing permeability for people, commodities, and ideas since the early 1990s) as well as the implementation of new trans-border infrastructures eventually shaped local discourses and practices in the socio-economic development of south-east Kazakhstan’s agricultural sector. It is scrutinized herein how various forms of trans-border socio-economic interactions (although heavily regulated) and China’s (agri-) economic policy in Xinjiang started to affect farmers’ ambitions and practices across the border.

Accuracy and Timeliness of Knowledge Dissemination on COVID-19 Among People in Rural and Remote Regions of China at the Early Stage of Outbreak.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) spread throughout China in January 2020. To contain the virus outbreak, the Chinese government took extraordinary measures in terms of public policy, wherein accurate and timely dissemination of information plays a crucial role. Despite all of the efforts toward studying this health emergency, little is known about the effectiveness of public policies that support health communication during such a crisis to disseminate knowledge for self-protection. Particularly, we focus on the accuracy and timeliness of knowledge dissemination on COVID-19 among people in remote regions—a topic largely omitted in existing research. In February 2020, at the early-stages of the COVID-19 outbreak, a questionnaire survey was carried out. In total, 8,520 participants from seven less economically developed provinces situated in the borderlands of China with large ethnic minority groups responded. We analyzed the data through poisson regression and logistic regression analyses. We found that (1) people in remote regions of China obtained accurate information on COVID-19. Further, they were able to take appropriate measures to protect themselves. (2) Result from both descriptive analysis and multivariable regression analysis revealed that there is no large difference in the accuracy of information among groups. (3) Older, less educated, and rural respondents received information with a significant delay, whereas highly educated, younger, urban residents and those who obtained information through online media were more likely to have received the news of the outbreak sooner and to be up to date on the information. This research provides evidence that disadvantage people in remote regions obtained accurate and essential information required to act in an appropriate manner in responses to the COVID-19 outbreak. However, they obtained knowledge on COVID-19 at a slower pace than other people; thus, further improvement in the timely dissemination of information among disadvantage people in remote regions is warranted.

Measuring non-Han bodies: Anthropometry, colonialism, and biopower in China's south-western borderland in the 1930s and 1940s

This article examines the biopower of non-Han bodies by considering the intersections of anthropology, racial science, and colonial regimes. During the 1930s and 1940s, when extensive anthropometric research was being undertaken on non-Han populations in the south-western borderlands of China, several anthropologists studied non-Han groups under the aegis of frontier administration. Chinese scholars sought to generate the physical characteristics of ethnic minority groups in the south-west of China through the methodology of body measurement, in order to identify forms of social and political intervention in the management of the non-Han population in wartime. This article examines the global transmission of Western social science in China, highlighting the local reception of Western racial taxonomy. Non-Han bodies were represented as a subcategory of the Mongolian/‘Yellow’ race through anthropometric research. The body measurements of non-Han people were used to demonstrate physical similarities between the Han and various ethnic minority groups in order to evoke a unified Zhonghua minzu (Chinese ethnicity) that embraced both the Han Chinese and frontier ethnic minority groups.

Shen Congwen's Idealized Ethnic

Abstract This article investigates the underexamined ethnic motifs of the modern literary master Shen Congwen's 沈從文 fictional creations. In the field of Chinese literary scholarship, Shen is widely recognized as a leading figure of the May Fourth “native soil” literary tradition and is usually labeled as a “regionalist” writer. Yet as an ethnically hybrid author, Shen's ethnographically inspired, mythologizing accounts of indigenous non-Han tribes place him in a long tradition of searching for moral truths in borderland societies in Chinese literary and cultural history. The article argues that ethnicity is an important motif that runs throughout the early Shen Congwen's literary oeuvre, particularly in the Miao-themed stories that he crafted in the 1920s and 1930s. Shen idealizes non-Han peoples, particularly the Miao in southern China's borderland, as the ultimate source of moral courage and aesthetic perfection in his vision of a wholesome China. Through his ethnically themed novellas and short stories, Shen is both heir to and questions the Confucian tradition of locating a civilizational “other” in the non-Sinitic/non-Han border regions. The article further reveals how Shen embodies contradictory motifs with regard to ethnicity in China: on the one hand, he romanticizes the Miao as moral agents living freely in a timeless society, governed only by divine powers and unruly passions. On the other hand, Shen laments the historical discrimination experienced by the Miao and assumes a sober voice as he calls for ethnic equality. Simultaneously lyrical and political, Shen's ethnically themed works are significant for forming new scholarly understandings of both May Fourth literature and the broader discourse of ethnicity, which underpins the very notion of Chineseness in modern China.

Across Forest, Steppe, and Mountain: Environment, Identity, and Empire in Qing China's Borderlands by David A. Bello, and: A World Trimmed with Fur: Wild Things, Pristine Places, and the Natural Fringes of Qing Rule by Jonathan Schlesinger

Across Forest, Steppe, and Mountain: Environment, Identity, and Empire in Qing China's Borderlands by David A. Bello, and: A World Trimmed with Fur: Wild Things, Pristine Places, and the Natural Fringes of Qing Rule by Jonathan Schlesinger

Twitter and the Alarming Case of China's Borderlands

Anthropology NewsVolume 59, Issue 6 p. e175-e179 November/December Online Content Twitter and the Alarming Case of China's Borderlands Jordan C. Keck, Jordan C. KeckSearch for more papers by this author Jordan C. Keck, Jordan C. KeckSearch for more papers by this author First published: 12 August 2019 https://doi.org/10.1111/AN.1044AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume59, Issue6Special Issue: Silicon ValleyNovember/December 2018Pages e175-e179 RelatedInformation

Rubber out of the ashes: locating Chinese agribusiness investments in ‘armed sovereignties’ in the Myanmar–China borderlands

ABSTRACTChina’s contemporary cross-border investments in northern Myanmar have been confronted by, and in turn have re-animated, the region’s post-Cold War geographies and associated illicit drug economy. Since the mid-2000s, mainland Chinese companies have invested in large-scale agribusiness concessions in northern Myanmar under China’s liberalized opium substitution programme. Chinese companies have partnered with local armed ‘strongmen’ – many of whom were or still are involved in the illicit drug trade – where they exercise armed authority within a wider landscape of ‘armed sovereignties’. Field case study data demonstrate how China’s contemporary cross-border investments have extended Myanmar’s national political authority within the arc of armed sovereignties. Chinese-backed agricultural estates, whether awarded to paramilitary militias or rebel leaders under ceasefires, acted as state territorial interventions and led to incremental Myanmar state-building outcomes. The state-building effects from contemporary Chinese investments are in contrast to the Cold War period in which China sought to destabilize non-aligned nation-states by supporting armed communist revolutions. The study traces how China’s current land-based investments have reawakened the borderland’s legacy of political violence and reconfigured armed sovereignties closer towards Myanmar’s military state.

Across Forest, Steppe, and Mountain: Environment, Identity, and Empire in Qing China's Borderlands. By David A. Bello . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. 350 pp. ISBN: 9781107068841 (cloth).

Across Forest, Steppe, and Mountain: Environment, Identity, and Empire in Qing China's Borderlands. By David A. Bello . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. 350 pp. ISBN: 9781107068841 (cloth).

David A. Bello , Across forest, steppe, and mountain: environment, identity, and empire in Qing China's borderlands (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016). Pages xviii + 336 + tables 9 + maps 5. £64.99 hardback, $80.00 ebook.

David A. Bello , Across forest, steppe, and mountain: environment, identity, and empire in Qing China's borderlands (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016). Pages xviii + 336 + tables 9 + maps 5. £64.99 hardback, $80.00 ebook. - Volume 32 Issue 1

Bordering Spaces, Practising Borders: Fences, Roads and Reorientations across a Nepal–China Borderland

ABSTRACTInfrastructure developments across the trans-Himalaya have rapidly advanced Nepali and Chinese state presences across spaces where central governance has long been absent. This study examines how new border infrastructures of fences and roads shape commercial and cultural relationships between Mustang (Nepal) and Tibet and the ways in which these processes serve state-making purposes for both Nepal and China through the governance of highland–borderland landscapes. A Tibetan cultural region at Nepal's northern border, Mustang's human and physical geography supports trade corridors that link the Tibetan Plateau with the plains of India. Merchants, mendicants and militaries have traversed these trade routes for centuries, giving rise to a unique social landscape that largely transcends modern demarcations of a bordered world. Looking across the trans-Himalaya, this article argues that as Chinese and Nepali authorities introduce new material structures and institutional practices to regulate and solidify the border between Tibet and Mustang, local communities are alternatively oriented towards either Kathmandu or Beijing under shifting terms of economic and political power.

Folded Basinal Compartments of the Southern Mongolian Borderland: A Structural Archive of the Final Consolidation of the Central Asian Orogenic Belt

The Central Asian Orogenic Belt (CAOB) records multiple Phanerozoic tectonic events involving consolidation of disparate terranes and cratonic blocks and subsequent reactivation of Eurasia’s continental interior. The final amalgamation of the CAOB terrane collage involved diachronous closure of the Permian-Triassic Solonker suture in northernmost China and the Jurassic Mongol-Okhotsk suture in northeast Mongolia and eastern Siberia. The distribution, style, and kinematics of deformation associated with these two terminal collision events is poorly documented in southern Mongolia and northernmost China because these regions were later tectonically overprinted by widespread Cretaceous basin and range-style crustal extension and Miocene-recent sinistral transpressional mountain building. These younger events structurally compartmentalized the crust into uplifted crystalline basement blocks and intermontane basins. Consequently, widespread Cretaceous and Late Cenozoic clastic sedimentary deposits overlie older Permian-Jurassic sedimentary rocks in most basinal areas and obscure the deformation record associated with Permian-Triassic Solonker and Jurassic Mongol-Okhotsk collisional suturing. In this report, satellite image mapping of basinal compartments that expose folded Permian-Jurassic sedimentary successions that are unconformably overlapped by Cretaceous-Quaternary clastic sediments is presented for remote and poorly studied regions of southern Mongolia and two areas of the Beishan. The largest folds are tens of kilometers in strike length, east-west trending, and reveal north-south Late Jurassic shortening (present coordinates). Late Jurassic fold vergence is dominantly northerly in the southern Gobi Altai within a regional-scale fold-and-thrust belt. Local refolding of older Permian north-south trending folds is also evident in some areas. The folds identified and mapped in this study provide new evidence for the regional distribution and kinematics of Jurassic and Permian-Triassic contractional tectonism in the southern Mongolia-northern China borderland region. The newly mapped folds are also important potential targets for hydrocarbon exploration and vertebrate paleontological discoveries.

Making Mountain Places into State Spaces: Infrastructure, Consumption, and Territorial Practice in a Himalayan Borderland

This article looks at a trans-Himalayan borderland to see how new road development projects affect social and sovereign relationships across mountain landscapes between Chinese Tibet and Mustang, Nepal. Research asked about local experiences with new forms of motorized transport and popular consumption of Chinese-manufactured commodities to understand what factors led the Nepali state to undertake new bureaucratic projects in a historically peripheral space. Employing a dialectic framework of mobility and containment, a materialist-territorial analysis reveals how transborder infrastructure development affects trade relations and consumption practices in the Nepal–China borderlands and, in turn, how these dynamics condition state-making processes at social and geopolitical levels. Following the cross-scalar trajectory of one rural road project from local grassroots initiative to national development program to international transportation network, I argue that the economic interests of a place-based project with regional cultural connections set in motion an expanding presence of Nepali state apparatuses in a trans-Himalayan borderland space.

The bridge that divides: local perceptions of the connected state in the Kyrgyzstan–Tajikistan–China borderlands

ABSTRACTThe collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 brought profound changes to the borderlands of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Xinjiang. In eastern Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan’s Gorno-Badakhshan region, present-day weaknesses in territorial control of the post-Soviet state’s edges are directly wedded to borderlanders’ memories of Soviet-era practices of bordering, perceived locally as both systemically stronger and cognitively more beneficial to local lifeworlds than contemporary ‘Chinese penetration’. Across the border in Xinjiang, a formerly distant state has been brought into borderlanders’ locales and inscribed into everyday lifeworlds through novel manifestations of the state, which significantly affect cross-border interaction. By comparing how borderlanders on both sides of this frontier themselves choose to characterize border processes between ‘their’ states in the initial two decades of connections to Xinjiang, I explore how and why Kyrgyz and Tajik/Pamiri borderlanders voice strong opinions about what it is they feel has changed in these administrative-territorial homelands. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork on both sides of this frontier, I argue that the gradual bridging of this formerly sealed border has led to neither the development of a new trans-frontier identity nor locally established trans-frontier networks but, instead, reconfirmed borders between China and Central Asia.

Getting stuck within flows: limited interaction and peripheralization at the Kazakhstan–China border

ABSTRACTFor more than two decades, the Sino–Soviet border was almost hermetically closed to the exchange of people and goods. In the late 1980s, however, exchanges resumed at a remarkable pace between the immediate border communities of Zharkent, in Kazakhstan, and Chinese Khorgos. But this situation was short-lived. Currently, trade turnover in consumer goods between the two countries is conducted primarily via the hub bazaars of Urumqi, in China, and Almaty, in Kazakhstan, several hundred kilometres inland from the border. While the borderland population’s agency in these trade processes remains limited, top-down modernization efforts to upgrade infrastructure in the borderlands and to ‘centralize the periphery’ are the subject of popular controversy. The article explores local representations of development and exchange in the Kazakhstan–China borderland town of Zharkent and the everyday social practice and discourses they generate. I examine the peripheralization of this borderland community, which remains largely bypassed by commodity flows, at a moment characterized by multi-scalar attempts at modernization. In so doing, I argue that the trajectories of borderland lives perpetuate a subjective positioning in social space that reinforces perceptions of ‘remoteness’ and ‘disconnection’, despite powerful state-advocated visions of modernity.

From Yao to now: Daoism and the imperialization of the China/Southeast Asia borderlands

This article investigates the adoption of Daoist ritual among the Yao peoples in South China and mainland Southeast Asia. The Song Dynasty imperial court patronized new Daoist ritual traditions that harnessed martial deities such as the Thunder Gods. Although these traditions were mostly southern in origin, it is not until the Qing dynasty that we find evidence for their circulation among the Yao. After discussing historical representations of Yao religion from the Song to the Qing dynasty and the specific historical contexts that gave rise to each representation, I conclude by examining how beliefs and practices derived from these same Daoist ritual traditions were active among the Iu Mien in Laos during the Second Indochina War. What is needed is an analysis that links a specific ethnographic or historiographic representation with a broader understanding of local, regional, and even transnational ritual practices in the borderlands of China and Southeast Asia.

Nationalism and internationalism on the borders: The West China Union University Museum of Art, Archaeology and Ethnology (1914–51)

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the role played by the missionary West China Union University Museum of Art, Archaeology and Ethnology in shaping notions of nationalism and internationalism in China's southwest. Located in Chengdu, a place of multiethnic and global encounters on China's borderlands, this paper argues that the West China Museum was at the forefront of global efforts surrounding the development of museums which sought to advance scholarly research and education for citizens of both China and the world. Although nationalism and internationalism converged in the museum's displays and exhibitions, such a process was not without tensions. As Christianity faced the challenge of rising Chinese nationalism during this period, the missionary museum and its curators played a pivotal role in mediating the demands of both sides by engaging with local communities and the extensive use of their transnational networks.

Exile Island: Xinjiang Refugees and the “One China” Policy in Nationalist Taiwan, 1949–1971

The extraordinary lengths to which the Chinese Nationalist government on Taiwan went after 1949 to pursue a “One China” policy during the Cold War are well known. Recently declassified archives reveal, however, that Chiang Kai-shek's determination to maintain the geopolitical integrity of China went far beyond the suppression of a Taiwanese independence movement and lukewarm support for the 1959 Tibetan uprising. The exodus of several thousand Uighur and Kazakh refugees from Xinjiang, a mostly Muslim province only loosely integrated into the modern Chinese state, provided a rare opportunity for the Nationalist government in exile to make overtures to a vulnerable non-Han population whose Cold War loyalties were up for grabs. This study of the historically unique and nearly unknown Office for the Chairman of the Xinjiang Provincial Government in Taiwan demonstrates the Nationalist commitment to preserving the non-Han borderlands of China while in exile, even if the immediate beneficiary of such efforts was the Communist government on the mainland.

Roads in China's Borderlands: Interfaces of spatial representations, perceptions, practices, and knowledges

AbstractSince the beginning of the twenty-first century, the tarmac road network in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in northwest China has been greatly expanded. The total length of roads increased from about 30,000 kilometres in 1999 to more than 146,000 kilometres in 2008. Though roads are considered by the state to be instruments of economic development, in multi-ethnic border regions like Xinjiang, the role of an efficient road network in the construction of the Chinese state's imaginary ‘bounded space’ is arguably just as crucial. With the help of Lefebvre's (1991) and Soja's (1999) conceptualization of space, this article explores the multiple spatial figurations of which roads are a part in Xinjiang. The article starts from ‘the mappable’ dimension of the expanding road network, and moves on to discuss perceptions and representations related to this expansion, before finally discussing how individuals creatively explore its fissures and hidden pockets.

Book Review: India–China Borderlands: Conversations beyond the Centre by Nimmi Kurian

Book Review: <i>India–China Borderlands: Conversations beyond the Centre</i> by Nimmi Kurian