Since the turn of the millennium, China’s momentous global presence has become a major force reshaping the developmental trajectories of many countries, transforming the livelihood of peoples in different regions, inspiring fear and hopes in equal measures. “Global China,” taking the forms of outbound investment, migration, global media network, multilateral financial institutions, soft power projects and diplomatic initiatives, is not just changing the world but also presents an intellectual challenge to China scholars. How should we re-conceptualize “China” as a subject matter as it goes beyond its geographical border? What kind of methodological strategies are necessary to capture global China? How can we formulate theoretical categories and propositions to explain China outside of China?
This workshop addressed these questions by bringing together a group of junior and senior scholars who have done grounded empirical research on China’s multifaceted overseas engagements in Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America. The significance of the workshop cannot be overstated, considering the state of the existing global China literature (e.g. Brautigam 2009, 2015; French 2014; Economy and Levi 2014; Sun 2017; Alden 2007; Taylor 2006). First, most studies focus on China in Africa to the exclusion of other world regions in which China has also been active. There has been a conspicuous lack of comparison, either between China in different countries, or between Chinese and non-Chinese actors in the same location. Second, these studies are by and large descriptive, journalistic, and policy-driven, with little engagement with general disciplinary knowledge or scholarly debates. Third, most existing studies resort to easily available aggregate official statistics of trade, investment and migration, or policy documents and diplomatic announcements, lacking fine-grained qualitative data that can illuminate processes, mechanisms, agencies, interests and relations.
The design of the workshop was deliberately comparative. By pairing researchers with similar empirical foci – ranging from infrastructural investment, labor, diaspora politics, Communist united front strategies, cultural and medical diplomacy – but with data collected from different parts of the world, the workshop aimed to generate comparative findings for new conceptualization and theorization. As most participants are in the process of either completing their research or writing up their findings as doctoral dissertations, first scholarly books or new monographs, the workshop provided timely feedback for authors to incorporate in their ongoing work. Finally, in the interest of intellectual diversity, the workshop featured scholars from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds (sociology, geography, anthropology, political science, environmental studies and global studies) and stages of academic careers (professors, associate professors, assistant professors, post-doctoral fellows and PhD candidates).
Topics and Participants:
Title: “China’s infrastructural and land investment in South East Asia and Brazil”
Authors: Juliet Lu and Gustavo de L. T. Oliveira
Discussant: Liu Hwa-Jen
Title: “China’s cultural and medical diplomacy in Ethiopia and South Sudan”
Authors: Maria Repnikova and Yidong Gong
Discussant: Huang Jaw-Nian
Title: “Business as politics in Taiwan and Thailand”
Authors: Po-Yi Hung and Wu Jieh-min
Discussant: John Chung-En Liu
Title: “Chinese business diaspora as agents of global China in Laos and the Philippines”
Authors: Kelly Wanjing Chen and Alvin A. Camba
Discussant: Chih-Jou Jay Chen
Title: “Labor, leisure and ethics in the Chinese-African encounter in Angola and Tanzania”
Authors: Cheryl Mei-ting Schmitz and Derek Sheridan
Discussant: Wang Hong-zen
Title: “China’s scramble for copper mines? Peru and Zambia compared”
Authors: Ruben Gonzalez-Vicente and Ching Kwan Lee
Discussant: Xu Liang
Sponsors:
American Council of Learned Societies
Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange
National Taiwan University Global Asia Center
Academia Sinica
Global China Center of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology