Marina Svensson

Debating human rights in China : a conceptual and political history

Debating human rights in China : introductory perspectives -- The conception of human rights in the West : historical origins and contemporary controversies -- Culture and human rights : between universalism and relativism -- China and the introduction of Western thought -- Ideas of human rights in the early twentieth century : the quest for national salvation -- The new culture movement and beyond : human rights and the liberation of the individual -- The Nanking decade, 1927-1937 : liberal and radical voices on human rights -- Human rights debates in wartime China : between individual freedom and national salvation -- The 1950s : human rights debates on two sides of the Taiwan Strait -- The domestic challenge over human rights : the Democracy Wall activists and the official reaction, 1978-1982 -- A contested and evolving discourse : human rights debates since the late 1980s -- The Chinese human rights debate : conclusion and prospects (Less)

The Chinese human rights reader : documents and commentary, 1900-2000

In contrast to the many military, diplomatic, and historical works on the Korean War, this book takes a cultural approach that emphasizes the human dimension of the war and especially features Korean voices. It includes chapters on Korean art on the war, translations into English of poetry by Korean soldiers, and American soldier poetry on the war. There is a photographic essay by combat journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Max Desfor. Other chapters analyze songs on the Korean War -- Korean, American, and Chinese Korean films on the war and Korean War POWs and their contested memories.

The Rise and Fall of Investigative Journalism in China: Digital Opportunities and Political Challenges

In February 2016, President Xi Jinping visited the three major state media outlets, People’s Daily, Xinhua News Agency and China Central Television (CCTV), where he emphasized the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) supreme role in media work. In no uncertain terms, Xi stressed the need to control the media and that the media should speak for and protect the Party, arguing that the ‘family name of the media is the Party’ (Wong, 2016). This was but the latest example of a tightening of the media environment since Xi Jinping came to power in 2012. The rise of online public debates and critical and investigative reporting, well underway since 2003 and reaching a new height with the advent of microblogging in 2009, had stimulated close interactions between journalists, civil society actors, lawyers and concerned netizens (Svensson, 2012). The official concern and fear about losing the ideological battleground has been expressed and communicated in several important political speeches, propaganda directives, policy documents and different regulations and laws, and resulted in efforts to reassert control over both the Internet and traditional media (e.g. Creemers, 2016; Freedom House, 2016a, 2016b). One of the earliest examples of a tightening media environment under Xi Jinping was the Southern Weekend incident in January 2013. The newspaper, one of the most

From Nonperson to Public Intellectual: The Life and Works of Yu Jianrong

This special issue focuses on the multifaceted scholar and public intellectual Yu Jianrong. Yu is a sociologist with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), an accomplished scholar on Chinas social problems, a public intellectual vocal in some of the countrys most heated debates, and a blogger with 1.5 million followers on the countrys most popular social media platform, Sina Weibo. His impact as a public intellectual has also been noticed abroad, and in 2012, Foreign Policy included him on their list of the worlds most influential intellectuals.

Show us life and make us think: engagement, witnessing and activism in independent Chinese documentary today*

ABSTRACT This introduction to the special issue, ‘Engagement, Witnessing and Activism: Independent Chinese Documentary Filmmakers’ Different Positions, Approaches and Aesthetics,’ argues that how the political is registered and expressed in Chinese activist documentaries cannot simply be read through Western ideas, concepts and aesthetics. Rather, Chinese work has been shaped partly in relation to state-sanctioned public discourse, and partly through the localising of international influences according to Chinese socio-political conditions. Contemporary Chinese activist documentary makers have chosen as their primary modus operandi an open, exploratory engagement with the ‘grassroots’ (jiceng). The core commitment in this approach is to the truth of the on-screen subject’s experience as they themselves see it. Modes of engagement with the grassroots include: making visible people and identities that state-sanctioned representations hide or gloss over; bearing witness to events and situations that are similarly hidden, or presented in a very particular manner, in state-sanctioned representations; and exploring memories and historical experiences which are otherwise unacknowledged or presented within narrow interpretive parameters in state-sanctioned media. This introduction details how the articles in this special issue analyse and discuss Chinese activist works that utilise one or more of these modes.

Digitally Enabled Engagement and Witnessing: The Sichuan Earthquake on Independent Documentary film

ABSTRACT This article builds on recent works on witnessing, socially engaged documentary filmmaking and studies on the role of new digital technologies for witnessing trauma, recording memories and enabling activism. In a devastating earthquake in Sichuan province on 12 May 2008, almost 90,000 people, at least 5000 of them being children, died. Parents and bystanders provided the first footage of the earthquake, recorded in shaky images on their mobile phones and camcorders, and many later continued to document the destruction and their search for justice, which hailed the beginning of citizen camera witnessing in China. A range of Chinese filmmakers documented the disaster and its aftermath in full-length films, and in doing so helped the victims bear witness to their trauma and fight for justice that was unacknowledged in the traditional media. At least 16 independent documentary films have to date been made dealing with the earthquake in different ways. The films fall into different types, ranging from poetic, observational, expository, participatory and performative, and they also reveal different forms of witnessing practices. The article addresses the witnessing practices of ordinary citizens, enabled by new digital technologies, and analyses a selection of the documentary films with respect to their genre and modes of witnessing.

Yu Jianrong: From Concerned Scholar to Advocate for the Marginalized

In this second issue on the scholar and public intellectual Yu Jianrong, we address some of the topics that have been at the core of his academic work and where his research and views have helped shaped awareness of these issues among the general public and the academic community. We focus on the rural-urban divide, land issues (including land confiscations and property demolitions), the letters and visits system, and social unrest and the so-called stability issue. To highlight the public intellectual dimension of Yus work, we have selected some of his articles from traditional media; speeches that he has made and that have been circulated on the Internet; public debates with officials, scholars, and foreigners; and interactions with netizens on Sina Weibo.

Heritage’s place: Heritage and narratives in city promotional films and independent documentary films in Beijing and Shanghai

This paper looks at the place of heritage in city branding in China and the different discourses and narratives found in city promotional films and independent documentary films. A city’s character is shaped by its history. All the different cultural, social and historical events that have taken place in the city inform its identity and urban form, as manifested in monuments and buildings from different time periods. The question is what aspects of its history and heritage a city chooses to preserve and celebrate, how it is imagined and narrated, and to what extent and how it then figures in city branding. City branding is often top-down and managed by municipal governments and tourism offices that privilege certain aspects of the history and heritage to project a positive picture of the city while ignoring other more problematic and negative aspects. This is very obvious in the case of China where city branding is a relatively new phenomenon, and, as I will argue, often difficult to separate from either nation branding or political propaganda. Cultural heritage policies have undergone significant ideological shifts since 1949, which can be observed in the selection of cultural heritage sites and changes in preservation policies. Since the early 1990s, city re-developments have led to much destruction of the built environment and historic neighbourhoods in Beijing and Shanghai. In the name of progress many old buildings and neighbourhoods have been demolished to give way to high rises, shopping centres and office buildings, whereas some historic neighbourhoods have become gentrified. In recent years many local governments have realised that “selective” preservation is good business and important for tourism and city branding. This understanding is reflected in projects such as Xintiandi (Shanghai) and Qianmen (Beijing), although they are also criticised for their inauthentic character and gentrified nature and for the displacement of old residents. It is interesting and ironic to note that historic sites and environments figure prominently in city promotional films, and often are depicted in a nostalgic and aesthetic light, despite the fact that many such sites have now been demolished. A sanitized, selective and aestheticized vision of the past seems to be preferred in order to brand cities for the future, at the same time that new modern architecture also serve to manifest the city’s international outlook. However, the official vision of the city and recent urban changes pictured in city promotional films haven’t gone unchallenged as independent documentary filmmakers and artists provide alternative and more critical stories in their films. The paper begins with a general discussion on city branding and heritage, and the role of visual representations in promotional films. It then provides a brief background to heritage issues and urban developments in Beijing and Shanghai. The focus is on how and to what extent cultural heritage figured in slogans, city promotional films, and projects before and during the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the 2010 Shanghai World Expo. I also look at some more recent developments in city branding in the two cities and how it is reflected in new promotional films. The paper then addresses the challenges and alternatives visions of the city voiced by different people in independent documentary films and art. (Less)

New Crime in China: Public Order and Human Rights

as-health model to a sex-as-pleasure model. McMillan concludes that “the sex shop industry is now a site where sexual morality is being reworked, and the meaning of ‘sex’ itself is being contested” (p. 137). In his investigation of sex-selling, Zhang Heqing agrees with Li Yinhe that prostitution should be decriminalized (as opposed to legalized, which implies extensive state involvement). Although public policy since 1991 has banned anything related to sex-selling, with a series of “strike hard” campaigns, paradoxically, the number of sex-sellers (approximately 2.1 million today) has increased. Solutions are hard to find, however, in a market-oriented system in which most sex-sellers are motivated by economic necessity and decentralized power has devolved to entrenched local interests. Given the continued power of the Party and its rhetorical emphasis on Marxist understandings of sex and gender relations, the author essentially calls for a new language to understand the forces that drive Chinese society today. Finally, the editor’s own chapter on sex-related bribery and corruption is a fitting ending to the volume, nicely combining its twin concerns of sexuality and state power. She highlights the tangled debates over the rampant abuse of coerced sex and sex-in-exchange and concerns over protecting women without jeopardizing individual rights. “The ongoing debate over how best to regulate corruption and the trading of power and sex,” Jeffreys concludes, “can only contribute to new specifications of what constitutes ‘good governance’ and the appropriate range of sexual behaviors in present day China” (p. 175). In sum, although she does not make the argument explicitly, Jeffreys seems to be saying that the applicability to reform-era China of many concepts used in the West to discuss sex and sexuality—citizenship, individual freedom, civil society—is problematic. Hopefully, the current debates analyzed in this volume will lead to a new language of sex and sexuality more appropriate to the China of today. SUE GRONEWOLD, History, Kean University, Union, New Jersey, USA

Confucianism and Human Rights

1. The Chinese Tradition in Antiquity1. The Oracle-Bone Inscriptions of the Late Shang DynastyDavid N. Keightley2. Classical Sources of Chinese Tradition Burton Watson, by David S. Nivison, Irene Bloom3. Confucius and the AnalectsIrene Bloom4. Mozi: Utilitarianism, Uniformity, and Universal Love, by Burton Watson5. The Way of Laozi and Zhuangzi6. The Evolution of the Confucian Tradition in Antiquity7. Legalists and Militarists8. The Han Reaction to Qin Despotism9. Daoist Syncretisms of the Late Zhou, by Qin, and Early Han10. The Imperial Order and Han Syntheses11. The Economic Order Burton Watson, by Wm. Theodore deBary12. The Great Han Historians Burton Watson3. Later Taoism and Mahyna Buddhism in China13. Learning of the MysteriousRichard John Lynn, by Wing-tsit Chan, Irene Bloom14. Daoist ReligionFranciscus Verellen, by Nathan Sivin, et al.15. The Introduction of Buddhism16. Schools of Buddhism17. Schools of Buddhism4. The Confucian Revival and Neo-Confucianism18. Social Life and Political Culture in the Tang19. The Confucian Revival in the Song20. Neo-Confucianism: The Philosophy of Human Nature and the Way of the Sage21. Zhu Xis Neo-Confucian Program Wm. Theodore deBary22. Ideological Foundations of Late Imperial China23. Neo-Confucian Education24. Continuity and Crisis in the Ming