Dear Colleagues,
We are happy to announce the publication of the latest issue of the Made in China Journal. You can download it for free at this link: madeinchinajournal.com/2024/08/27/bending-chineseness.
Below you can find the editorial.
Best,
Ivan Franceschini (franceschini.ivan@gmail.com)
Bending Chineseness: Culture and Ethnicity after Xi
A new Chinese Government textbook for university students, An Introduction to the Community of the Zhonghua Race (中华民族共同体概论), promotes President Xi Jinping’s vision for governing the country’s diverse population. This approach shifts away from celebrating cultural differences—what the political scientist Susan McCarthy once termed ‘communist multiculturalism’—and towards a Han-dominant identity, which is a form of racial nationalism inspired by sociologist Fei Xiaotong’s concept of ‘multiple origins, single body’ (多元一体). While the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as amended in 2018 guarantees minority rights and political autonomy through the framework of ‘minority nationalities’ (少数民族 ), the textbook suggests that Tibetans, Uyghurs, Mongols, and other Indigenous groups should eventually assimilate into Han culture, raising concerns about the future of minority languages and traditions. President Xi’s new approach to national unity has faced significant resistance from both minority and Han officials. Yet, this resistance only prompted an even more muscular response: revamping government departments, harsh crackdowns in minority-populated areas, and removing minority officials who oversaw ethnic affairs. In this issue, we ask contributors to reflect on the state of ethnic minority culture in the wake of Xi’s new ethno-nationalist order and explore what remains of cultural differences at the end of dreams of communist pluralism and ethnic autonomy.
We open with an essay in which Juan Qian explores the implications of historical disputes about the Qing Dynasty for China’s national identity and territorial claims, particularly given the current efforts by the Chinese Government to promote a unified ‘Chinese national community’. Thomas White discusses how longstanding derogatory associations between peoples of the frontiers and animals have been reworked in twenty-first-century China both by minority artists and activists and by new imaginaries of nation-building and connectivity in the Xi era. Jenny Chio draws from the recollections of two Miao women to delve into the experience of being seen or being asked to be looked at as a minority person in China, arguing that the most powerful aspect of Chinese multiculturalism today is how it functions on the assumption that it cannot be so difficult to be oneself. Suvi Rautio delves into how the Chinese Government’s ‘Traditional Village’ heritage scheme validates statist views on tradition and Chinese civilisation while at the same time offering new ways of understanding discourse about ethnicity and multiculturalism. Ye Yang examines the dynamics of the integration of the Liangshan Yi ethnic group into China’s labour market, showing how, as their participation in migrant labour increases, they are confronted with major challenges, including precarious employment conditions, exploitation by intermediaries, and social marginalisation. As Uyghurs face policies of forced assimilation in China, Mirshad Ghalip focuses on the role of attitudes and ideologies in Uyghur heritage language maintenance through the stories of four individuals based in the United States. Ruslan Yusupov discusses China’s national campaign to ‘Sinicise Islam’ (伊斯兰教中国化) through the lens of the architectural renovations of some famous mosques. Finally, Dawa Lokyitsang asks the question ‘Are Tibetans indigenous?’, arguing that scholars must highlight the political stakes as well as the potentiality of why a group of people would or would not identify as indigenous.
This issue also features a forum in which contributors offer different perspectives on how Blackness has been imagined, defined, or practised in different moments of PRC history, from Black Panther visits to China and anti-racist solidarity in the Mao period, to the multilayered ambiguities of Global China today. Huang Mingwei explores contemporary formations of Chinese antiblackness by staging a conversation between Africa–China studies and theories of antiblackness—namely, Afro-pessimism. Derek Sheridan takes on the contentiousness of writing about race in Africa–China relations and points out how these tensions are related to other contentions about the nature of political-economy asymmetries in these relations, and the politics of knowledge production regarding who is speaking about whom. Kun Huang traces early translations of Black literature in Republican-era China and unpacks the parallel visions of the Harlem Renaissance that travelled across the Pacific. Ruodi Duan deconstructs the high tide of encounters between China and African American liberation movements during the Maoist era, highlighting how, while Chinese narratives in the 1960s promoted a linear vision of Black militancy that would join forces with the white working class, Black Power activists engaged with Maoism as a framework for a politics of racial nationalism that did not always aspire to interracial and anti-capitalist coalition-building. Zifeng Liu attempts to recover Mabel Robinson Williams, an African American radical woman, as a key figure in the history of Black internationalism in China, revealing and interrogating the gendered and sexualised terms under which she appears in the Chinese archive of Afro-Asian solidarity. Maya Singhal explores Black and Chinese collaborations in quality-of-life crimes—fare evasion and illegal street vending of counterfeit designer goods—in New York City’s Chinatown to consider how these minor crimes and everyday activities might be sites in which to develop working-class, anti-state solidarities. Fred Lai and Qidi Feng engage Noo Saro-Wiwa about her novel Black Ghost, in which she explores the lives of several African economic migrants living in China. Finally, we feature a couple of excerpts from Yvonne A. Owuor’s novel The Dragonfly Sea, with an original introduction by the author.
This issue also features several essays on assorted topics in the China Columns section. Yangyang Cheng examines the long history of US–China academic exchange to offer a critique of the concept of open science as a depoliticising myth that conceals the uneven structures of power undergirding knowledge production and transmission. Luke Hein sketches a few scenes from his time teaching a general interest class about China in Alabama State correctional facilities, demonstrating that US prisons represent an underserved but fertile site for China Studies. Tackling China’s Three-Child Policy, Susan Greenhalgh argues for the need to discuss population as a question of governance rather than numbers and asks what the Chinese authorities are doing in the name of population, what is most significant, and what forms of resistance are possible. Yawen Li takes creative expressions of solidarity from mainland China to recent global social movements about Ukraine and Gaza as a starting point to excavate the role of internationalism as a key dimension of radical leftist thought in modern Chinese history. Monique Taylor analyses the development of the digital yuan in the context of China’s broader economic and political strategies, including enhancing financial inclusion, centralising the nation’s payment ecosystem—currently dominated by private fintech players—and potentially challenging the US dollar’s global dominance. Zhongxian Xiao discusses how, while Chinese officials have been presenting a rosy image of high-speed railway growth under the label of ‘Chinese Speed’ since the 1980s, over the years the term has been redefined through a process of public contestation. Chuling Adam Huang delves into migration governance in a large-scale labour migration scheme in a Chinese city on the border with Vietnam, paying attention to the local government’s struggle to balance economic development goals with border security concerns. Casey Wei looks into yabi, a controversial Chinese subcultural phenomenon that has been around since the late 2010s, and argues that it exemplifies the return of the feminine supernatural—present throughout imperial and modern Chinese history—as a response to the challenges of the Anthropocene from the present-day involuted generation.
The issue also includes three opinion pieces. In the first, an anonymous former student of Uyghur scholar Rahile Dawut reacts to the life sentence meted out to her former mentor; in the second, Darren Byler and Karissa Ketter tackle China’s role in the Gaza crisis, pointing out how, while on the one hand the Chinese authorities seem to support Palestinian struggles, on the other, Chinese investment in Israeli infrastructure projects and colonial policing means they cannot be too vocal. In the third, Kexin Zhao and Pan Cheng discuss the uneven media coverage of the case of Chinese feminist activist and independent journalist Huang Xueqin and labour activist Wang Jianbing. In the Work of Arts section, Chenchen Zhang explores how the theories, plot, and characters of the Three-Body Problem series, a bestselling sci-fi trilogy by Liu Cixin that is now also a major Netflix series, are employed in Chinese digital discourse to illustrate visions of authoritarian, conservative, and misogynistic politics and to interpret the nature of international relations.
We conclude the issue with a series of conversations with the authors of recently released books and podcasts that might be of interest to our readers. Ivan Franceschini discusses with Yangyang Cheng Dissident at the Doorstep (Crooked Media, 2024), the podcast on Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng that she co-hosted. Jenny Chan engages Huaiyin Li about his Factory Workers in China, 1949–2019 (Stanford University Press, 2023). Andrea Enrico Pia and Federico Picerni talk to Margaret Hillenbrand about her On the Edge: Feeling Precarious in China (Columbia University Press, 2023). Christian Sorace chats with Alessandro Russo about his Cultural Revolution and Revolutionary Culture (Duke University Press, 2020). Elisabeth Forster interviews Zhongping Chen about his Transpacific Reform and Revolution: The Chinese in North America 1898–1918 (Stanford University Press, 2023). Brendan Galipeau has a dialogue with Timothy McLellan about his Science Interrupted: Rethinking Research Practice with Bureaucracy, Agroforestry, and Ethnography (Cornell University Press, 2024). A.C. Baecker talks to Jennifer Dorothy Lee about her Anxiety Aesthetics: Maoist Legacies in China, 1978–1985 (University of California Press, 2024). Finally, Ghassan Moazzin engages Margherita Zanasi about her Economic Thought in Modern China: Market and Consumption, c. 1500–1937 (Cambridge University Press, 2020).
The Editors