Christopher R. Hughes

Harmony and Discord in China's Africa Strategy: Some Implications for Foreign Policy

This article examines the challenges faced by Beijing in managing this increasingly complex relationship, reflecting upon the structural factors that encourage harmony and introduce discord in China–Africa ties. It examines how various policy solutions being considered by China, ranging from increasing participants in the policy making process to tentative engagement with international development regimes, may still not address the most difficult issues involving adverse reactions to the Chinese presence from African civil societies and political opposition groups. In particular the lack of a strong civil society inside China inhibits the ability of its policy makers to draw on the expertise of the kind of independent pressure groups and NGOs that are available to traditional donor/investor states. The article concludes by asking how the Chinese system can make up for these weaknesses without moving further towards the existing models and practices of the developed countries.

Nationalism in Chinese cyberspace

This article takes reactions to atrocities committed against ethnic Chinese during the riots that swept Indonesia in May 1998 as a case study by which to analyse the politics of nationalism in Chinese cyberspace. By focusing on Chinese website activity during the weeks that led up to an unauthorised demonstration on the Indonesian embassy by students from Peking University, it provides insights into how the Internet can be used to disseminate information, organise political action and express dissent in an authoritarian society. It concludes, however, that this case combined with more recent examples indicates that cyber‐politics is more likely to be used to promote nationalism than liberal democracy, the former being far more difficult to suppress than the latter for a regime whose legitimacy depends increasingly on nationalist claims.

Reclassifying Chinese Nationalism: the geopolitik turn

This article assesses the rise of China by exploring a number of recent popular Chinese political texts to go beyond explanations that take the international system as the level of analysis. It proposes that a merging of nationalism and geopolitical thinking is taking place, resulting in the emergence of a new form of nationalism that can be categorised as ‘geopolitik nationalism’ because it deploys many of the themes evident in the political thought of Germany and Japan before the two world wars. By considering the impact of such ideas, it is possible to gain new insights into recent assertive actions in Chinese foreign policy.

Japan in the politics of Chinese leadership legitimacy: recent developments in historical perspective

Abstract This article explores Sino-Japanese relations by looking at how negative sentiments towards Japan among the Chinese population are deployed as a form of political capital in struggles among the Chinese Communist Party elite. It gains insights into this process by looking at how such sentiments have been deployed to challenge the legitimacy of three CCP leaders since the establishment of the Peoples Republic of China, resulting in the downfall of two. The conclusions from these case studies are then used to understand how the current Chinese leadership has engineered the ‘new starting point’ in the relationship with Japan in the context of the movement from a ‘winner takes all’ type of factional politics into one characterized by ‘power balancing’ among the elite.

Interpreting Nationalist Texts: a post-structuralist approach

This article critically appraises the narrative of nationalist resurgence in China in the 1990s that structures much of the secondary literature on Chinese politics since Tiananmen. Adopting a post-structuralist method, Chinese texts from the 1990s are treated as discursive rather than as expressions of a common consensus, emergent ideology or political movement. This makes it possible to bring out the disparate points of view concerning the desirability of nationalism for China and to understand the strategies that are being deployed by authors within the context of everyday Chinese politics. It also reveals the significance of the absence from both the primary and the secondary texts of any mention of the advocacy of nationalism by the political leadership. When this hidden discourse is taken into account, it becomes evident that many of the texts that have been taken as expressions of a nationalist revival are either not particularly interested in nationalism or are highly sceptical concerning its possibilities for solving the problems faced by the Chinese state. Particularly significant is the way in which many of the texts locate themselves in relation to the official discourse on nationalism by appropriating its themes in order to promote and legitimate a wide range of other discourses with which it can be bound up, ranging from democracy to authoritarianism.

China and the globalization of ICTs: Implications for international relations

As the People’s Republic of China (PRC) accedes to the World TradeOrganization (WTO), much speculation has been generated about the political impact of the opening of its telecommunications market to foreign firms and investors. This article evaluates the assumptions behind competing views from the West and China, drawing out the implications for international politics. It argues that international economic, technological and security regimes fail to address human rights concerns that arise from the globalization of information and communication technologies (ICTs), despite the fact that serious problems are generated by the need for cooperation between liberal- democratic and authoritarian regimes to preserve state security. To redress the balance, it is necessary to move away from assumptions of technological determinism held by policy-makers, in favour of developing a communication analysis of security that can embrace broader political issues.

Globalisation and nationalism: squaring the circle in Chinese international relations theory

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Negotiating national identity in Taiwan: between nativisation and de-sinicisation

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Democratization and Beijing’s Taiwan Policy

Beijing’s Taiwan policy during Taiwan’s democratization was not initially shaped by consideration of political events on the island itself. Much more important was a combination of domestic pressures on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and changes in Beijing—Washington relations in the late 1970s. As democratization has proceeded in Taiwan, though, Beijing has been presented with new problems. Rather than reassess its claims to sovereignty over Taiwan, however, Beijing has tried to mobilize its resources in a variety of ways to manipulate emerging societal constraints in the island’s politics so as to promote unification on its own terms. The result is an emerging pattern of constraints on policy makers on both sides of the Taiwan Straits that is determined as much by developments on the mainland as it is by democratization in Taiwan.

New Security Dynamics in the Asia-Pacific: Extending Regionalism from Southeast to Northeast Asia

This article explains the emerging security dynamics in the Asia-Pacific in the context of the project to establish an “Asian Community”. Although the model of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has been constrained by a post-colonial attachment to sovereignty, new processes of domestic democratisation, taking in new members and dealing with non-traditional security threats have led to an acceptance of the need to deepen its social and political pillars. The real test for this project, however, will be whether it can be extended to Northeast Asia, where relations between states are still characterised by traditional power-balancing and rising nationalism.