Chinese Visions Research Articles

Chinese visions of self and Other: the international politics of noses

Abstract How does China view the world? While much has been written about how China's international relations are best seen as intercultural relations that do not exclude the Other, this article examines how self/Other relations are visualized in terms of the human face in China, in particular through iconic images that construct the Chinese self with and against foreigners with large noses. It employs interpretivist methods to consider the interplay of social relations and international relations in order to see how ‘external appearance’ and ‘external relations’ inform each other in Chinese theory and practice. It mobilizes the classical Chinese concept ‘deep-set eyes and high-bridged nose’ to compare iconic Chinese images of noses from the Tang dynasty, the Korean War, and twenty-first century China and Taiwan. This critical juxtaposition shows how foreigners are visualized as both friends and enemies in a hierarchical social system. The article's use of visual International Relations (IR) methods enables us to re-examine foreign affairs as a site of affective politics, and thus appreciate how China's ideological world-view resonates with how its artists, scholars and officials aesthetically view the world. This is a concern for IR scholars because world-views shape how foreign policy-makers frame foreign policy problems—and thus foreign policy solutions.

Chinese Visions of Progress, 1895 to 1949 ed. by Axel Schneider and Thomas Fröhlich

Reviewed by: Chinese Visions of Progress, 1895 to 1949 ed. by Axel Schneider and Thomas Fröhlich Viren Murthy (bio) Chinese Visions of Progress, 1895 to 1949. Edited by Axel Schneider and Thomas Fröhlich. Leiden: Brill, 2020. Pp. ix + 323. Hardback $177.00, ISBN 978-90-04-42653-5. The essays in this volume edited by Axel Schneider and Thomas Fröhlich deal with a crucial topic, namely discourses around the concept of progress in China. Although numerous authors, including Prasenjit Duara, Luke Kwong and others,1 have dealt with this issue, this volume goes further by examining the details of the interpretation of ideas of progress and showing that the incorporation of linear time in China was far from linear. The book is divided into an Introduction, three parts, and nine chapters. The first part, "Initial Conceptual Encounters," consists of two chapters, Kai Vogelsang's "The Chinese Concept of Progress" and Takahiro Nakajima's "The Progress of Civilization and Confucianism in Modern East Asia: Fukuzawa Yukichi and Different Forms of Enlightenment." Part Two, "Tides of Optimism," consists of five chapters, Li Qiang's "The Idea of Progress in Modern China: The Case of Yan Fu," Thomas Fröhlich's "Prospect Optimism in Modern China: The Foundation of a Political Paradigm," Peter Zarrow's "An Anatomy of the Utopian Impulse in Modern Chinese Political Thought," Leigh Jenco's "The Optimism of Cultural Construction in the 1930s: Wholesale Westernization, Cultural Unit Theory, and Cultural Construction on a Chinese Base," and Rui Kunze's "Fantasizing Science: The Idea of Progress in Early Chinese Science Fiction." Part Three, "Margins of Skepticism," consists of two chapters: Axel Schneider's "Critiques of Progress: Reflections on Chinese Conservatism" and Susanne Weigelin-Schwiedrzik's "Playing the Same Old Tricks: Lu Xun's Reflections on Modernity in his Essay 'Modern History.'" Together the essays cover a wide range of topics and consequently, I will selectively deal with a few essays to bring out the philosophical contribution of the volume. From the perspective of comparative philosophy, one of the key points of interest will be the manner in which traditional Chinese philosophies continue to inform visions of time and progress during the modern period, after 1895. The editors' choice of 1895 is significant because it is the date of the Sino-Japanese War, after which Chinese began to translate Western texts related to linear history and evolution. Joseph Levenson famously contended that the modern period implied a radically new conception of history in which the [End Page 1] tradition merely became a symbol of national identity.2 Levenson's claim was later challenged by many, including Chang Hao and Thomas Metzger, who argued for the continuing relevance of tradition in ways that many overlooked.3 This book goes beyond this traditional response by showing how modern Chinese thinkers transcended any simple opposition between universality and particularity whether they affirmed or rejected the idea of progress. Moreover, the book takes readers beyond the opposition between China and the West. Fröhlich writes: Chinese calls for catching up with the industrialized countries in the West rarely comprised the idea of a complete Westernization of China. Most advocates of "catching up" expected that China would follow a special path to modernity as compared to Western countries. Such an outlook was by no means exclusively Chinese. Similar discussions about a special path (Sonderweg) of catching up with the West from the starting point of a "belated nation" had taken place in Germany, Russia and Japan since the mid-nineteenth century. (p. 21) The book places China within a larger global intellectual trajectory, where starting late could imply different historical trajectories. Some of these trajectories could point beyond modernity itself. In the Introduction, Fröhlich cites the Chinese anarchist Wu Zhihui 吳稚暉 to show belief in progress could be connected to a universal utopia. Wu writes: [W]hen the world of great uniformity is reached, all forms of labor shall have been replaced by machinery… When the time comes that each can take according to his need, every human being will have an exalted, pure, and exemplary character… This is not a utopian idealization. There is already some evidence of its realization in countries...

Chinese Visions of Progress, 1895 to 1949, edited by Thomas Fröhlich and Axel Schneider. Leiden: Brill, 2020. 323 pp. US$172.00/€143.00 (cloth), US$172.00 (e-book).

<i>Chinese Visions of Progress, 1895 to 1949</i>, edited by Thomas Fröhlich and Axel Schneider. Leiden: Brill, 2020. 323 pp. US$172.00/€143.00 (cloth), US$172.00 (e-book).

Catholicity Under Heaven: Reformed Ecclesiology and Chinese Visions of Cosmopolitanism

Abstract Reformed catholicity suffers from a fragility that causes it to easily fragment over comparatively small differences. This study wagers that an important resource that can be useful for addressing this problem is the Chinese philosophy of tianxia. The article introduces the idea of a ‘Reformed catholicity under Heaven’ by placing a more liberal interpretation of tianxia in conversation with the problems in Reformed approaches to the church’s catholicity. In doing so, the article demonstrates tianxia’s ecclesiological usefulness while articulating two dimensions of ‘Reformed catholicity under Heaven’ that can deepen how Reformed churches inhabit catholicity in ways that promote unity.

The Perception of Time in European and Chinese Cultures

The article provides a comparative analysis of the perception of time in Europe and China. Time is considered as one of the fundamentals of mentality. The author presents the specifics of mythological time, distinguishing sacred and profane times and analyzing the correlation between time, space, things, and their repetition. European logos time, which becomes mainstream in Modern Times, is examined. The article describes the postmodern period that took shape in the 20th and early 21st centuries. The formation and contemporary image of time in China is traced in detail. This perception of time suddenly turns out to be the most relevant to today’s needs: in Chinese culture, time and space are closely connected, linearity is combined with cyclicality, involvement is combined with distancing, immovability and the ability to wait for the right moment – with an instant reaction. In Chinese culture, innovations are introduced under the guise of tradition (repetition), and activism, which has always been especially emphasized as the specificity of the modern Europe, as it turns out, is the most important characteristic of the Chinese (in contrast to traditional European ideas about Chinese passivity). Under modern “network” conditions, the substantial understanding of things, which is characteristic of European culture, has given way to a networking perception, which is specific to the Chinese (things as a network, a person as a plurality). This is a network in which interactions are carried out simultaneously and in different directions. By itself, a comparative analysis of mentalities yields important results and allows to draw far-reaching conclusions that are essential for understanding both the European and Chinese visions of the world. In conclusion, it becomes clearer what features of the Chinese mentality made possible not only the entry of China into the group of developed countries but also its transformation into one of the leaders among the world powers.

Chinese Science Fiction in the Anthropocene

&#x0D; A green future has become a central promise of the Chinese state and the environment is playing an increasingly important role in China’s bid to promote itself as a political alternative to the West. However, Chinese state environmentalism and its promotion of “ecological civilization” (shengtai wenming ? ??? ) have so far proven more aligned with political interests rather than environmental goals. At the same time, low -orbit industrialization as a response to the climate change or the resurgent fantasy of p opulation control as a necessity from the standpoint of biology in environmentalist discourse are increasingly entangled with anxieties and speculations about Chinese visions of the future. Using Liu Cixin’s short story The Sun of China ( Zhongguo taiyang ???? , 2001) and the 2019 blockbuster science fiction movie The Wandering Earth ( Liulang diqiu ???? ) by Frant Gwo as its point of departure, this paper discusses how current narratives of the Anthropocene are reflected and negotiated in Chinese science fiction. While both works demonstrate the symbolic and economic importance of science and technology to China’s growth and self-image, they also reveal that we cannot separate questions of the planetary from the historical contexts, in which they emerge.&#x0D;

Китайские представления о мироустройстве: традиция и современность

To engage successfully with China it is important to analyze perceptions of the world that have developed in that country in the post-war decades. These ideas, deeply rooted in the millennial history of the Celestial Empire, remain an infinite source of Chinese civilization’s strength in the face of external challenges. According to the authors, Chinese visions of the world order, globalization and further global developments are, in general, reasonable and constructive. The trade war initiated by the U.S. administration in 2018 is a kind of recognition of the validity of these Chinese perceptions.

Chinese Visions of World Order: Tianxia, Culture, and World Politics ed. by Ban Wang

Book Review| August 01 2018 Chinese Visions of World Order: Tianxia, Culture, and World Politics ed. by Ban Wang Wang, Ban, ed., Chinese Visions of World Order: Tianxia, Culture, and World Politics (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017), 330 pp. Barry Allen Barry Allen Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Common Knowledge (2018) 24 (3): 443. https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-6940318 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Barry Allen; Chinese Visions of World Order: Tianxia, Culture, and World Politics ed. by Ban Wang. Common Knowledge 1 August 2018; 24 (3): 443. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-6940318 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsCommon Knowledge Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © 2018 by Duke University Press2018 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

비대칭적 국제질서: 천하질서, 그 변용과 현대적 재구성(Ⅰ) : ‘세력균형의 질서’에서 ‘제국의 질서’로

천하질서는 보편주의와 패권주의가 결합한 질서이다. 천하질서는 지리적 개념이기도 하고, 정치적 개념, 문화적 개념이기도 하다. 이것은 중국과의 거리를 기준으로 한 지리적 질서였고, 동시에 중국의 부유함과 패권을 기반으로 한 정치적 질서이기도 했으며, 무엇보다 이 질서는 보편주의와 보편가치를 공유하는 문명의 질서, 도덕의 질서이기도 했다. 하지만 이 질서는 본질적으로 중국 중심의 패권질서였다. 최근 중국의 연구자들은 천하주의와 천하질서 그리고 조공체제에 큰 관심을 보인다. 그러한 관심의 궁극적인 지향점은 천하체계를 21세기의 새로운 세계질서의 원리로 복원하는 것이다. 이들은 천하질서가 주변국의 안정과 발전을 보장하는 질서였다고 주장한다. 어떤 젊은 국제정치학자는 다음과 같은 사실을 강조한다. 중국은 세계질서를 새롭게 만드는데 선도적인 역할을 해야 한다. 중국이 세계질서의 성공적인 건설자가 되기 위해서는 중국이 전통적인 천하질서 속에서 계승할만한 요소를 발굴해야 하며, 그러한 요소를 세계 여러 나라에 전파해야 한다. 중국의 학자들은 천하질서가 공존의 번영을 가져다 준 평화로운 왕도의 질서였다는 사실을 강조한다. 또한 그들은 천하질서가 패권적이고 억압적인 질서가 아님을 강조한다. 나아가 그들은 이 질서가 중국 중심의 세계질서가 아니라 다중심의 세계질서이며, 관용과 포용의 질서라는 점을 재차 강조하고 있다. 이들의 주장을 자세히 분석해 보면 이들의 논리는 문화적 보편주의에 기반을 두고 있다. 이 점은 천하주의도 마찬가지이다. 본고에서 천하질서에 대한 재검토를 시도하는 것은 이에 대한 이해가 현대 중국의 행동 패턴을 분석하고 전망하는데 필수적인 요소이기 때문이다.

A Regional Perspective on the U.S. and Chinese Visions for East Asia

A Regional Perspective on the U.S. and Chinese Visions for East Asia Yuen Foong Khong (bio) The visions that great powers have for their neighborhood or regions farther afield are almost always about themselves—i.e., their role, power, and prestige in that neighborhood or region. The Monroe Doctrine was about fending off European encroachment into Latin America so that the United States could establish itself as the hegemon of the region. Xi Jinping's "China dream" is about internal rejuvenation, the consequence of which is a China that can stand tall in Asia. This essay examines how the United States and China view their respective roles and power in East Asia, how those views have changed over time, and what the implications are for the regional order. The Trump administration's perspective, I argue, is similar to that of previous administrations in assuming that U.S. hegemony is essential to maintaining security order in the region. China's perspective, on the other hand, has changed with time: while it welcomed the U.S. role in maintaining the security order in the past, China now believes that its growing clout makes it the United States' coequal in the region. Yet it is unlikely that the Trump administration will grant China that coequality. This sets the stage for heightened Sino-U.S. rivalry in the years to come, with China challenging the United States on multiple fronts, and the rest of East Asia having to choose sides. The United States' Perspective and Policies The United States sees itself as an Asia-Pacific power that plays a crucial role in the maintenance of the region's security order.1 The U.S. position is premised on its preponderant military power, its network of military alliances and strategic partners, and the institutions and instruments of the global market economy. Successive administrations have deemed it a vital U.S. interest to prevent the rise of a hostile hegemon in three key regions of the world: Western Europe, the Persian Gulf, and East Asia. That is another [End Page 6] way of saying that the United States expects to remain the hegemon of these regions—from this perspective, U.S. hegemony is both good for the United States and good for world order. For much of the Cold War and most of the 1990s, this view of the United States as the primary provider of security and economic order in East Asia was not seriously challenged. In retrospect, the United States' hot wars in Korea and Vietnam may be seen as responses to Communist challenges to its hegemonic position in the region. East Asian leaders welcomed the U.S. projection of military power in their region, as can be seen from the presence of U.S. troops and materiel in bases in Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and Thailand. In the 1990s, Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia also encouraged the U.S. naval presence in Southeast Asia by allowing the United States to use their facilities. East Asian policymakers spoke of the need for a strong U.S. military presence to maintain peace and stability, when what they actually meant was that they were content with U.S. hegemony. After September 11, some East Asian policymakers felt that the United States was distracted by its global war on terrorism and failed to pay sufficient attention to power shifts in the region. It is true that the United States skipped some multilateral meetings during the George W. Bush years, but it did what really mattered: consolidating its alliances with Japan, South Korea, and Australia, while bringing in India as a trusted strategic partner. Similarly, many in East Asia welcomed the Obama administration's pivot or rebalancing to Asia, which they portrayed as the United States "returning" to balance a rising China. But the United States never left the region, and the pivot was an attempt to reinforce U.S. hegemony, not balance China. The Trump administration's "America first" National Security Strategy continues this emphasis on U.S. military preponderance and leadership. The document is replete with phrases about the importance of the United States retaining military "overmatch" vis-à-vis its adversaries and maintaining a "favorable...

Chinese Visions of the Asian Political-Security Order

Chinese Visions of the Asian Political-Security Order

Contesting Visions of East Asia's Regional Economic Order: A Chinese Perspective

Contesting Visions of East Asia's Regional Economic Order:A Chinese Perspective Xinquan Tu (bio) and Yue Lyu (bio) Despite being the biggest country in Asia, China only within the last century has developed a sense of itself as a regional country. Historically, China considered itself the center of the world. It was not until the early twentieth century, after Western powers overwhelmingly defeated the Qing Dynasty and forced the country to open its markets, that the Chinese people began to observe the world from the perspective of a country located in East Asia. Since the government's economic reforms and opening in the 1980s, China has become a significant destination for trade and investment and a key link in the regional production network. In 2010, China surpassed Japan to become the world's second-largest economy. This essay will provide a Chinese perspective on the contending U.S. and Chinese visions of the regional economic order in East Asia. The discussion is divided into four sections examining China's vision of the East Asian economic order, China's perception of the U.S. role in this order, the points of convergence and divergence between the Chinese and U.S. visions, and the impact of China's recent initiatives on the existing regional economic architecture. China's Vision of the East Asian Economic Order In the first three decades after the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the relationship between China and its East Asian neighbors was difficult due to ideological differences. However, the rapid development of some of these ideological opponents became a mirror for China to reflect on its own backwardness and seclusion. Deng Xiaoping's visits to Japan, Singapore, Thailand, and Malaysia in 1978 were considered a strong stimulus for his decision to reform and open up the Chinese economy. These neighbors set a good example for economic development, and China was eager to learn from and cooperate with them. China's opening was [End Page 26] also a great investment opportunity for these countries, in particular their overseas Chinese communities.1 Since then, diplomatic and economic relations between China and many East Asian countries have grown closer, and China has re-emerged as a major power in the region. However, it is not yet powerful enough to set up the regional architecture it prefers. In addition to the challenges China faces from the two incumbent powers, the United States and Japan, issues such as the South China Sea and North Korea complicate China's relations with the Association of Southeast Asian States (ASEAN) and South Korea, respectively.2 These tensions are causing China to rethink its strategy for regional integration. With no pressing need to build an East Asian community, China has chosen to lower its expectations and take a more pragmatic approach. At the same time, China has begun to look beyond East Asia and see itself not only as a regional power but also as a global actor. Beijing has attempted to establish frameworks beyond East Asia in order to bypass the constraints imposed by Japan and the United States. This has, in part, involved launching cooperative forums with other regions of the world. For example, China started the China-Africa Cooperation Forum in 2000, took the lead in establishing the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) with Russia and Central Asian states in 2001, and launched the China–Latin America Forum in 2014. Recently, most attention has been paid to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which President Xi Jinping proposed in 2013. Although the plans for this wide-ranging and ambitious initiative have not been fully disclosed, it is obvious that East Asia is only a part of China's global strategy. In East Asia, which is still very important for China in terms of trade and investment, Beijing's main approach has shifted from regionalism to bilateralism. Though the China-Japan-Korea Free Trade Agreement (FTA) has stalled, China signed FTAs with South Korea, ASEAN, and Australia in 2015, indicating its pragmatic approach to regional integration in East Asia and the Asia-Pacific. In December 2015 the State Council released [End Page 27] the first official document regarding China...

From Earth to Ocean: Hunchun and China’s Ambivalent Maritime Past

The Chinese town of Hunchun has been at the heart of Northeast Asian cooperation and development plans since the early 1990s, but in a region where maritime connections are essential, Hunchun lacks direct sea access. I explore how the sea has remained a powerful animating force behind Chinese visions for Hunchun’s future. After providing an ethnographic account of the contemporary place of the sea in local discourses of Hunchun’s identity, I draw on archival material to analyze the politico-linguistic history of maritime affairs in this part of China and beyond. I examine how the notion yang (ocean/foreign) transformed from being a label of foreign interventions in China to serving as a metaphor for domestic economic progress. The sea is both a distant dream and a source of concrete developmental potential for Hunchun today. It is also an optic through which to observe the town’s future.

Mao's, China's, or Confucius's Tianxia? Reflections on Chinese Visions of World Order

Mao's, China's, or Confucius's Tianxia?Reflections on Chinese Visions of World Order Bai Tongdong (bio) Ban Wang, editor. Chinese Visions of World Order—Tianxia, Culture, and World Politics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017. vi, 330 pp. Paperback $27.95, ISBN 978-0-8223-6946-2. China is a big country, both in terms of size and population. It has been rising economically, and quickly so. All these facts naturally lead to emerging and pressing questions: what does this rise mean to the existing global order? Will China repeat what other major rising countries, such as pre-WWII Japan and Germany, have done, that is, to demand more from the rest of the world that is fitting to its growing power? And if the rest of the world rejects their demands, will they resort to the use force to get it? Or will China avoid this trap for latecomers, follow a different path, or even invent a new order that improves upon the existing one? More and more scholars, myself included, have recognized the significance of this question and have tried to address it from different perspectives. The recently published anthology, Chinese Visions of World Order, edited by Ban Wang, is a collection of 11 articles (by 13 authors) that are meant to address the issue. These contributions are divided into five parts. I will discuss these chapters (plus the Introduction) in an order that I think makes more sense than is currently presented in the book. In the Introduction, the history and the significance of the key issue is presented, along with the chapter breakdown of the whole anthology. In the main body of the anthology, the only chapter that is mainly devoted to elaborating on the significance of this issue is by Prasenjit Duara. According to him, the rise of China leads the Chinese to try to understand its significance and also the question of whether China can produce a vision that avoids the injustices of the earlier world order. According to him, this order is a covert globalism that is rooted in nation-states, and there are conflicts between nation-states that claim agency and sovereignty and limit sympathy to the national community on the one hand, and globalism that is meant to transcend these on the other (as well as the kind of individualism that protects individuals against the intrusions by the nation-state). A pressing practical issue is environmental and ecological sustainability. In the existing world order, nation-states benefit from extracting resources, sometimes globally, but the environmental costs are borne by the world as a whole. But the world cannot demand a remedy from the nation-states because there is no effective representative of the world, while only nation-states have full sovereignty over their own affairs. Duara then argues that Kant's transcendence, according to some interpretations, is not constructed from an Archimedean point, contrary to the spirit of the Enlightenment; rather, it is an [End Page 334] attempt to transcend the self (be it the individual or the state) by thinking from the perspectives of the other. Hegel and Marx are more explicitly and firmly following this line of thinking. The transcendence, or the salvation, can only be achieved by the will and faith of humans, revealed by the progress and the end of history. This vision, however, is deeply utopian, and Duara argues that its realization, achievable only through a movement of radical social change, needs "sacred authority," or "a compelling symbology and affective power" (p. 80). But for the justifiable fear of extremism (such as Nazism), the moderns are unwilling to resort to these tools. Duara then argues that perhaps the Confucian, and especially the Neo-Confucian, "practices of self-cultivation in sustaining the ethical authority of heaven" may be useful, for as transcendence in Confucianism, "heaven was tapped as a figureless figure of hope for a variety of ethical and empowering personal projects that validated this very transcendence" (p. 80). The question Duara raises, namely how to combine reason with the sacred, is a profound one for the moderns, and the Confucian heaven may also be more inclusive than the Christian God or Allah. Still, if...

The Great War, the Collapse of Civilization, and Chinese Visions of World Order

This contribution discusses the impact of the Great War on China in terms of the collapse of the nineteenth century imperial order constructed around the concept of "civilization," in which China had been subordinated. Conceptions to strengthen China, from reformist to revolutionary, that had developed under this old order were now put to the test through this period of geopolitical change. Particular examples covered range from the diplomat Wu Tingfang, the public intellectual and politician Liang Qichao, to the nationalist revolutionary Sun Yat‐sen.

Sporting Gender: Women Athletes and Celebrity-Making During China’s National Crisis, 1931–1945 by Gao Yunxiang

Reviewed by: Sporting Gender: Women Athletes and Celebrity-Making During China’s National Crisis, 1931–1945 by Gao Yunxiang Lisa Tran Gao Yunxiang. Sporting Gender: Women Athletes and Celebrity-Making During China’s National Crisis, 1931–1945. Toronto: University of British Columbia Press, 2014. xiv, 328 pp. $32.95 (paper). In the past two decades, there have been several studies using sports as a lens through which to view twentieth-century China. Gao Yunxiang’s book contributes to this growing field by exploring the gendered nature of the relationship between sports and nation, and by spotlighting the lives and contributions of the female athletes at the center of this relationship. Gao begins with the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing to highlight the link between competitive sports and nationalist pride, a connection that she traces to the association of sports with national salvation during the 1930s, a period of political instability and foreign invasion. The concept of tiyu—variously translated as sports, athletics, physical fitness, physical education, “body culture,”1 and “physical culture”2—gained prominence during this period of national crisis. Gao’s book provides an explicitly gendered analysis of the centrality of tiyu in discourses on nation and modernity by examining the role of women as administrators and athletes in the development of tiyu in early twentieth-century China. In addition, she also traces the effects of tiyu on images of women, fashion, film, public policy, and sexual mores. Sporting Gender is divided into six chapters, with three chapters focused on specific women, two chapters on groups of female athletes, and one chapter on the concept of jianmei (“robust healthy beauty”). Chapter 1 uses the career of Zhang Huilan, the pioneer of women’s physical education in China, to map the trajectory by which educated and talented women navigated the administrative infrastructure of the male-dominated tiyu establishment. Zhang’s academic credentials and nationalist goals identified her as a “New Woman,” a female ideal type that was the opposite of the pleasure-seeking and politically apathetic “Modern Girl.” However, as Gao shows throughout the book, the New Woman and the Modern Girl often overlapped, an argument she develops more fully in Chapter 5’s discussion of the Olympic swimmer Yang Xiuqiong and Chapter 6’s story of the actress Li Lili, who Gao argues represented a “radical new type of film character: the sportswoman” (p. 213). Gao analyzes the tension between the New Woman and the Modern Girl and shows how Yang and Li negotiated between their public personae and their private lives. Chapter 2 explores the various meanings that came to be associated with the term jianmei, which Gao translates as “robust healthy beauty,” in popular and state discourses. Women’s magazines used the term to describe the female athletic form. Gao shows how the standards of jianmei were based on the physiques of Western women and reflected Chinese visions of modernity. During the New Life Movement, jianmei came to be targeted as a moral threat by the state. In reaction, urban intellectuals invoked jianmei to celebrate the body in its natural form. Chapters 3 and 4 follow the careers, respectively, of the basketball team of the Liangjiang Women’s Tiyu Normal School and female track stars. Gao uses the basketball team as a springboard for an analysis of the ways in which the rules of the game were gendered and racialized. She also shows how the masculine warrior image emerged to counter views of female basketball players as “Modern Girls.” In contrast, female track stars responded to criticism of their “excessive masculinity” (p. 143) by cultivating “traditional feminine virtues” such as filial piety and self-sacrifice (p. 147). Gao shows how these female athletes also combatted portrayals of them as Modern Girls by throwing themselves into training, limiting their social activities, and joining nationalist causes. Most of the sources Gao uses are drawn from articles published in the Republican press; she supplements these with memoirs, biographies, and published interviews of the women who are at the heart of her study. Woven throughout the book are images and illustrations that bring the material to life. Although she mentions the use of archival materials, the bibliography lists...

Introduction: Utopias from Other Cultural Traditions

Introduction: Utopias from Other Cultural Traditions

Toward a “Great Unity”

This article discusses core social and political concepts regarding subjectivity widely used by Chinese intellectuals between 1840 and 1940, including ge ti (singular subject), ge ren (singular person), wo (I), and Da Tong (Great Unity). Collectively these concepts convey an understanding of human beings as interrelated individual subjects but one differing from Western notions of individualism. The idea of Da Tong, for instance, carried an idealistic, utopian charge. It was foundational for Chinese visions of revolution that aimed to change China not by embracing modernity but by transforming “the barbaric world dominated by civilized countries,” in the words of the late Qing Dynasty intellectual Yang Du. These theories of subjectivity deserve renewed attention, as they are valuable spiritual resources for contemporary left-wing intellectuals as they try to imagine the future for China and the world.

The rise of Chinese exceptionalism in international relations

Although exceptionalism is an important dimension of China’s foreign policy, it has not been a subject of serious scholarly research. This article attempts to identify manifestations of exceptionalism in China’s long history and explain why and how different types of exceptionalism have arisen in different historical periods. The analytical approach is both historical and theoretical. It explores how international structure has interacted with perceptions of history and culture to produce three distinctive yet related types of exceptionalism in imperial, Maoist, and contemporary China. While resting on an important factual basis, China’s exceptionalism is constructed by mixing facts with myths through selective use of the country’s vast historical and cultural experiences. The implications of contemporary China’s exceptionalism — as characterized by the claims of great power reformism, benevolent pacifism, and harmonious inclusions — are drawn out by a comparison with American exceptionalism. While American exceptionalism has both offensive and defensive faces, Chinese exceptionalism is in general more defensive and even vague. While not determinative, exceptionalism can suggest policy dispositions, and by being an essential part of China’s worldview, it can become an important source for policy ideas, offer the ingredients for the supposed construction of Chinese theories of international relations, and provide a lens through which to view emerging Chinese visions of international relations.

After Unipolarity: China's Visions of International Order in an Era of U.S. Decline

The emerging transition from unipolarity to a more multipolar distribution of global power presents a unique and unappreciated problem that largely explains why, contrary to the expectations of balance of power theory, a counterbalancing reaction to U.S. primacy has not yet taken place. The problem is that, under unipolarity and only unipolarity, balancing is a revisionist, not a status quo, behavior: its purpose is to replace the existing unbalanced unipolar structure with a balance of power system. Thus, any state that seeks to restore a global balance of power will be labeled a revisionist aggressor. To overcome this ideational hurdle to balancing behavior, a rising power must delegitimize the unipole's global authority and order through discursive and cost-imposing practices of resistance that pave the way for the next phase of full-fledged balancing and global contestation. The type of international order that emerges on the other side of the transition out of unipolarity depends on whether the emerging powers assume the role of supporters, spoilers, or shirkers. As the most viable peer competitor to U.S. power, China will play an especially important role in determining the future shape of international politics. At this relatively early stage in its development, however, China does not yet have a fixed blueprint for a new world order. Instead, competing Chinese visions of order map on to various delegitimation strategies and scenarios about how the transition from unipolarity to a restored global balance of power will develop.