Dear Colleagues,
It is with great pleasure that we announce the release of the inaugural issue of Global China Pulse (GCP), a new open access biannual journal dedicated to all facets of Global China stemming from The People’s Map of Global China. Alongside the informational infrastructure the Map provides, with this journal, we are creating a new space to publish content in a variety of styles and, possibly, experiment with different approaches and formats.
Just like the Made in China Journal (MIC), GCP rests on two pillars: the conviction that today more than ever it is necessary to bridge the gap between the scholarly community, civil society, and the general public; and the related belief that open access is necessary to ethically reappropriate academic research from commercial publishers who restrict the free circulation of ideas.
Ideally, the two journals should be read side by side, with MIC focusing on Chinese domestic politics and society and GCP looking at China’s international footprint. We realise this distinction between ‘domestic’ and ‘global’ is blurred and China’s internal issues are often not separated from broader international trends; it is not by chance that for the past few years, we have covered Chinese international engagements in MIC. However, given the level of attention and scrutiny that Global China has been receiving over the past decade and the polarisation between opposing narratives on the subject, we believe such an important and controversial topic warrants a separate, free-standing publication.
Our aim in launching this publication is to create a platform where it is possible to discuss Global China from a more grounded perspective that is not consumed by the geopolitical speculations and abstract and sweeping macroeconomic discussions that often dominate current debates. With this goal in mind—and in line with what we are attempting to do with The People’s Map—in this space, we will mostly offer views on how Global China is playing out at the grassroots, focusing on how Chinese engagements overseas impact the lived experiences of people in different localities and the environments in which they live.
We hope you will like what you see and that you will help share the news.
Best,
Ivan Franceschini (ivan.franceschini@anu.edu.au) for the editors