Michael Szonyi

China and Southeast Asia's Ethnic Chinese: State and Diaspora in Contemporary Asia

China and Asias Ethnic Chinese Asias Ethnic Chinese: Characteristics and Networks Overseas Chinese Remittances and Investments Chinas Reform Era Policies Toward Ethnic Chinese and the Ethnic Chinese Response The Economic and Political Effects of Ethnic Chinese Investments in China International Implications of Chinas Policies and Ethnic Chinese Investments in China Economic Cooperation Between China and Singapore Conclusion Bibliography Index

The Illusion of Standardizing the Gods: The Cult of the Five Emperors in Late Imperial China

Nineteenth-century observers of the Fuzhou area, both Chinese and Western, were struck by the worship of a group of deities associated with pestilence and epidemic disease. The local people called these gods the Five Emperors ( Wudi ). To Justus Doolittle, an American missionary stationed in Fuzhou, Proclaimed Zuo Zongtang, Governor-General of Fujian and Zhejiang: “the rival societies for getting up processions to parade the idols have from the beginning violated the law and corrupted morals, hence the evil must be stopped without delay” (Zuo 1867, 22). While these two observers each brought his own concern to bear on his perceptions of popular belief and ritual practice, they were united in their focus on the dangers the worship of these deities posed to public morality and order; neither was much interested in the identities or histories of these gods. But a detailed investigation of their identities and histories may explain how the deities were perceived as dangerous to public morality and order, and offers rich insight into the social history of Late Imperial China.

Secularization Theories and the Study of Chinese Religions

The author proposes a dialogue between recent literature on the history of Chinese popular religion and recent sociological debates about secularization theory, asking whether a better understanding of concepts, theories and evidence from one field may be productive in interpreting those of the other. The author suggests on the one hand that certain elements of secularization theory can be useful tools in understanding the modern history of religions in China and on the other that thinking about what secularization has meant in China is crucial to a comparative global history of religion and modernity. He also argues that attention to secularization both as a historical process and as a political ideology may help us to better understand the religious policies of the People’s Republic of China today. L’auteur engage un dialogue entre la littérature actuelle traitant de l’histoire de la religion populaire chinoise et les débats sociologiques récents à propos de la théorie de la sécularisation. Il s’interroge sur la possibilité qu’une meilleure compréhension des concepts, théories et postulats de l’un de ces champs contribue à interpréter ceux de l’autre. L’auteur suggère, d’une part, que certains éléments de la théorie de la sécularisation peuvent constituer des outils servant à mieux comprendre l’histoire moderne des religions en Chine et, d’autre part, que la réflexion relative à ce que la sécularisation a représenté en Chine est cruciale pour envisager une histoire globale et comparative de la religion et de la modernité. Il avance aussi que l’attention portée à la sécularisation, comme processus historique autant que comme idéologie politique, peut nous permettre de comprendre plus justement les politiques religieuses actuelles de la République Populaire de Chine.

Making Claims about Standardization and Orthopraxy in Late Imperial China Rituals and Cults in the Fuzhou Region in Light of Watson’s Theories

This article presents research on popular cults and ancestral sacrifice from the Fuzhou region in order to reflect on James Watson’s theories of ortho-praxy and standardization. It argues that substantive standardization and adherence to orthopraxy should be distinguished analytically from claims to standardization and adherence to orthopraxy, that the historical sources sometimes indicate the latter rather than the former, and that the distinction between the two limits the theories’ capacity to fully account for social and cultural integration in late imperial China.

Mothers, Sons and Lovers: Fidelity and Frugality in the Overseas Chinese Divided Family Before 1949

The predominance of men, including married men, among Overseas Chinese emigrants gave rise to a distinctive family structure, in which the male emigrant lived apart from his wife and other family members who remained back home in China. This article considers two very different bodies of evidence, archives concerning Overseas Chinese efforts to recover property lost during World War II and magazines and newspapers published for Overseas Chinese in North America and Southeast Asia, in order to discuss tensions within the Overseas Chinese divided family in the early twentieth century. Family members who remained in China came to play important roles in the management of the family estate, including remittance-funded investments. Heightened anxiety about female sexuality and the trustworthiness of family members in general reflected the concern of absent Overseas Chinese men that their family members back home might make decisions about family management that were different than those desired by the migrants themselves.

The Cold War on the Ground: Reflections from Jinmen

The purpose of this JAS roundtable is to reflect on the Cold War in Asia. Even to frame the issue in such terms is to confront the “formidable semantic contradiction that is inherent in the idea” of the Cold War (Kwon 2010, 7). For the very notion of the Cold War—as a “long peace” in which bipolar tensions did not lead to hot war—sits uneasily with the reality that in Asia bipolar tensions were imbricated in horrific conflicts that left millions of human casualties. On the other hand, to use the term “Cold War” simply as a label for a historical period, or “epoch” in Alfred McCoys terms, is to invite imprecision. Moreover, even as a label for a historical period, the term still effaces the experience of much of the world, since the end date of the period is defined by the experience of Europe and the superpowers.

Lineages and the Making of Contemporary China

In many parts of rural China today, the most imposing structure in the village is a stately ancestral hall that houses tablets representing the spirits of the ancestors. These halls have been rebuilt or constructed anew by the villagers, often at huge expense. Wherever they are found, and even in some places where they are not, rituals of ancestral sacrifice have been invented or revived, with elaborate liturgies, rich offerings, and lively theatrical performances for the spirits (and their descendants) to enjoy. The spread of ancestral halls has roughly followed the patterns of economic growth. In southern coastal regions the first halls were rebuilt more than thirty years ago and are already due for renovation; in other places in central and western China halls are being built in large numbers today for the first time. The reappearance of ancestral halls seems a surprising by-product of the reform era. Are they the architectural expression of an ancient but enduring system of values, still relevant for the people of 21st century China? Or are they simply hollow shells, nostalgic relics of a cultural system that is now gone forever? The recent publication of countless thousands of lineage genealogies prompts similar questions. Some are new editions of works lost or destroyed in the Cultural Revolution; others completely new efforts to promote kinship solidarity; still others exist only virtually, in the form of online genealogies. Why is the tracing and recording of shared ancestry seen as socially productive in the rapidly modernizing and urbanizing China of today? Other more subtle expressions of patrilineal kinship raise different questions. Political scientists have found that kinship organizations play a significant role in village elections, that village roads and schools tend to be better—in technical terms, that provision of public goods is stronger—in communities where local cadres are embedded in patrilineal kinship organizations. After more than century of revolutionary change, how can this be? This chapter explores these questions by outlining a history of the lineage in mainland China since the late 19th century. Three concerns justify attention

Review: China's LeadersCHINA'S LEADERS the new generation LiChengLanham MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001, xviii, 283pp, US

different institutional structures utilized, the actors involved, the interaction among these actors, and the different meanings attributed to the term foreign policy itself in the European context. This detailed examination of the complex layers of foreign policy is located in a theoretical examination of how foreign policy-making can be best understood in a European context. The useful approach used in this book is to divide European foreign policy into three areas: European Community foreign policy, which deals mainly with trade; European Union foreign policy, which focuses on the Common Foreign and Security Policy; and the foreign policies of individual member states. In each area, the book examines the context of policy-making, the actors involved, the institutional structures, and concludes with a detailed case study of decision-making. The overall conclusion is that, although the three areas remain separate, there is a growing interaction among them. The prospect of a single, fully integrated European foreign policy remains a long-term prospect, however. Nevertheless, there has been considerable movement towards a common foreign policy, and pressures are likely to continue in this direction. In all, the book is a valuable addition to the literature on foreign policy in Europe.

22.95 paper, ISBN 0-8476-9497-6.

THE AGE WHEN PROFESSIONAL CHINA WATCHERS could only peer over the border from Hong Kong is long over. Western analysts now have access to much more and much better information about the Peoples Republic of China. But does this necessarily translate into better informed or more rational analysis or analysis that is taken more seriously? In Canada, much of the discourse on China continues to be shaped by a curious admixture of grandiose expectation, exclusionist alarmism, and racial stereotyping. In this brief, short-term forecast of developments in China, I focus on what I consider some common misperceptions in current understandings of China. Specifically, I explore the changing domestic economic and political situation in China; the likelihood of aggressive Chinese military activity, especially against Taiwan; and the ongoing problem of illegal emigration to Canada.China has now been under reform for almost as long as it was under Mao. But the legacy of the Maoist era lingers, and the course of reform has been far from smooth. In the 1980s and early 1990s, just about everyone gained from the decollectivization and decentralization reforms, and household incomes across China rose. The situation has changed dramatically since the mid-1990s. The productivity of Chinese agriculture skyrocketed after individual farm households started to make their own decisions and reap the benefits of their own hard work. But without mechanization and economies of scale, further gains will be difficult. Rural incomes have begun to stagnate, even to decline. On the industrial side, the collectively owned Township- Village Enterprises (TVEs), which drove much of the growth of the earlier period by expanding low-end manufacturing, are now finding that they too have reached the limits of what can be accomplished without larger scale and more advanced technology. As a result, the Chinese economy is becoming more and more capital intensive. Growth in output is increasingly elastic with respect to employment; growth no longer equals job creation. This means that further reform can no longer absorb the surplus of Chinas ever-growing labour force, and unemployment is rising rapidly.(1)At about three per cent, official unemployment in China is remarkably low. But this figure is misleading because rural unemployment or underemployment is notoriously difficult to measure, and large numbers of urban workers have been laid-off (xiagang) but remain on the administrative rolls of their employer. Some analysts estimate that the number of real urban unemployed is as high as twenty million. To this estimate must be added the tens of millions of rural migrants - Chinas so-called floating population - who have come to the cities looking for work, but are captured by statisticians only if they find work. As further reform means losses to some as well as gains to others, Chinese society is becoming increasingly unequal across the urban/rural divide and across regions. The disparities are already striking. The World Bank reports that urban households earn on average 2.5 times what rural households earn. When benefits such as housing, pensions, and insurance are included, the ratio rises to four times. There are serious and growing regional disparities. Per capita gross domestic product in Shanghai and other coastal regions is ten times that of the poorest provinces in the interior. Real unemployment is also unevenly distributed across regions; the highest levels are in the northern provinces, where the economy continues to be dominated by loss-making State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs).(2)Enterprise reform has given rise to the other serious problems confronting Chinas leadership: corruption, inefficiency, and the erosion of social welfare. In the 1980s, decentralization of management of collectively owned enterprises created all sorts of opportunities for the personal enrichment of managers and local officials. Then, in the mid-1990s, the state authorized the partial privatization of enterprises, both TVEs and SOEs. …THE AGE WHEN PROFESSIONAL CHINA WATCHERS could only peer over the border from Hong Kong is long over. Western analysts now have access to much more and much better information about the Peoples Republic of China. But does this necessarily translate into better informed or more rational analysis or analysis that is taken more seriously? In Canada, much of the discourse on China continues to be shaped by a curious admixture of grandiose expectation, exclusionist alarmism, and racial stereotyping. In this brief, short-term forecast of developments in China, I focus on what I consider some common misperceptions in current understandings of China. Specifically, I explore the changing domestic economic and political situation in China; the likelihood of aggressive Chinese military activity, especially against Taiwan; and the ongoing problem of illegal emigration to Canada. China has now been under reform for almost as long as it was under Mao. But the legacy of the Maoist era lingers, and the course of reform has been far from smooth. In the 1980s and early 1990s, just about everyone gained from the decollectivization and decentralization reforms, and household incomes across China rose. The situation has changed dramatically since the mid-1990s. The productivity of Chinese agriculture skyrocketed after individual farm households started to make their own decisions and reap the benefits of their own hard work. But without mechanization and economies of scale, further gains will be difficult. Rural incomes have begun to stagnate, even to decline. On the industrial side, the collectively owned Township-