Since the successful containment of COVID-19 in Wuhan in late March 2020, China had implemented a... more Since the successful containment of COVID-19 in Wuhan in late March 2020, China had implemented a nationwide highly stringent and restrictive zero-COVID policy to manage the pandemic until the sudden swift away from it in early December 2022. How did the Chinese Communist Party discursively construct it as a ‘normal’ and legitimate policy? Using interpretivism and poststructuralist political theory, this paper examines how Chinese political elites constructed a discourse of danger for the COVID pandemic, with the dominant discursive narratives full of xenophobic and nationalist languages. The discourse framed ‘foreigners’ as ‘threats’ to Chinese people’s health, advocated that China should rely on home-made vaccines and medicines and, more importantly, argued that the Chinese Communist rule demonstrates ‘institutional superiority’ over Western governance. This xenophobic and nationalist discourse has lingered on after the dismantling of the zero-COVID policy. There are grounds for u...
Order, Contestation and Ontological Security-Seeking in the South China Sea, 2020
The construction of the US order in East Asia in the early decades of the post-war era was influe... more The construction of the US order in East Asia in the early decades of the post-war era was influenced by a series of events unforeseen during the key international conferences in 1943–1945. The extension of the containment doctrine to Asia and the US engagement in armed conflicts on the Asian mainland led to the overturning of the pro-China arrangements agreed at Cairo, Potsdam and Yalta, and to the building of a ‘liberal’, anti-communist order in the region. The US ontological insecurity created by the loss of China to the communists was to be rooted out domestically and (re)produced in a strong anti-communist identity. Anti-communism became the criterion for cultural acceptability and participation in the American-led order, premised on distinctly binary representations of ‘good’ versus ‘evil’ and ‘tyranny’ versus ‘freedom’. A Chinese communist-dominated region would be completely delegitimised as a threat to American efforts to build a secure and viable liberal international order.
Order, Contestation and Ontological Security-Seeking in the South China Sea, 2020
This chapter asserts that the main obstacle to striking a grand bargain between China and the US ... more This chapter asserts that the main obstacle to striking a grand bargain between China and the US over their competing order-building projects is the ontological insecurity each of them is facing. Built on a socially constructed discourse and narrative that the territories were a historically undisputable part of China until France and Japan invaded them, territorial irredentism is essential for contemporary China to validate its national identity as a re-emerging East Asian power. The US believes that its national identity as a liberal hegemon is threatened by a revisionist, non-liberal China. To preserve the rules-based liberal order is crucial for it to keep its national identity intact. To make its order-building legitimate, China must act and speak in accordance with publicly accepted norms and rules. This would require China to be committed to contemporary international norms and rules rather than to the vaguely defined historic rights and the unsubstantiated nine-dash-line map.
This chapter considers how the negotiations over the United Nations Convention on the Law of the ... more This chapter considers how the negotiations over the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) in 1973–1982 exacerbated the unsettled status of the islands, and since then, how it has given room for regional states to lay claims to them under the protection of international law. While UNCLOS introduces the notion and practice of the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and extends continental shelf rights, allowing littoral states, including China, to exercise extended control over the seas beyond their borders, it makes no reference to historic rights and cognate rights, which are, however, at the heart of China’s territorial claims. In the midst of the UNCLOS III negotiations, the US began to take steps to enforce freedom of navigation and overflight unilaterally. Its Freedom of Navigation Operations programme was set up in 1979 to prevent states from making ‘excessive maritime claims’.
China’s rewriting of the regional maritime order focuses on re-interpreting UNCLOS on the legalit... more China’s rewriting of the regional maritime order focuses on re-interpreting UNCLOS on the legality of innocent passage of foreign warships through the territorial sea and of military-oriented activities of a foreign state in a coastal state’s EEZ. China also argues that its historic rights to the South China Sea, albeit vaguely defined, predated UNCLOS. Believing that UNCLOS is not the sole legal instrument in tackling maritime conflicts, China has asserted its intention to lead the development of international maritime norms. A change to the current understanding of the EEZ in China’s favour would substantially weaken US capacity to provide public goods. A Chinese Monroe Doctrine has also emerged in practice, which would dislodge the US from East Asia. China’s blue-water naval aspirations as well as militarisation of the occupied islands and attempts to exclude the US from regional talks on the code of conduct are clear signs of this strategy.
Order, Contestation and Ontological Security-Seeking in the South China Sea, 2020
The theoretical framework focuses on the interlocking relationship between order-building, ontolo... more The theoretical framework focuses on the interlocking relationship between order-building, ontological security and legitimation practices for both incumbent and aspiring hegemons. It conceptualises international order as a hierarchical political formation that requires a constantly renegotiated social compact among member states to legitimately settle the rules and arrangements. Renegotiation is open to contestation when an emergent aspiring power harbours intentions to dislodge the existing leading state. An ontological security lens exposes the need for consistency in the narratives and routines that states use to sustain predictability and certainty in the (re)production of collective self-identity. Since order-building reflects the identity and preferences of the incumbent and aspiring hegemons, problems arise when one’s identity is not recognised by the other, creating ontological dissonance in autobiographical narratives and forcing an emotional reaction to perceptions of past unjust treatment. Ontological security-seeking states are compelled to order territorial space to maintain their own ontological security.
ABSTRACT The gross output value of China's rural industry grew rapidly from 38.5 billion... more ABSTRACT The gross output value of China's rural industry grew rapidly from 38.5 billion yuan in 1978 to 8245.6 billion yuan in 2000. An average annual growth rate of 21.8 percent, measured in real terms, was recorded for the rural industry for the period. One of the plausible ...
Page 1. Journal of Contemporary China (2000), 9(25), 513534 Business Government Relations in In... more Page 1. Journal of Contemporary China (2000), 9(25), 513534 Business Government Relations in Industrializing Rural China: a principalagent perspective CHARLES CL KWONG AND PAK K. LEE* This paper explains why ...
The Third Plenum of the 14th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in November 1... more The Third Plenum of the 14th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in November 1993 decided in principle for a comprehensive reform of central-provincial fiscal relations. Soon after the Plenum, the central government announced that the new fiscal system, known as the tax-assignment system (fenshuizhi), would be implemented nation-wide in 1994. With the aim of providing adequate revenues for government, particularly the central government, by revamping central-provincial revenue-sharing arrangements, the reform is to “[change] the current fiscal contractual responsibility system of local authorities to a tax assignment system …” and to “gradually increase the percentage of fiscal income in the gross national product (GNP) and rationally determine the proportion between central and local fiscal income.”
This book is the result of a conference hosted by the North American Chinese Sociologists Associa... more This book is the result of a conference hosted by the North American Chinese Sociologists Association in Toronto, Canada, in August 1997. It begins with an introductory chapter by Alvin Y. So, and is followed by 15 papers. The papers are divided into four parts, which deal with the roles economic institutions, gender, social networks and the overseas Chinese play in the integration of the three Chinese states.
Since the successful containment of COVID-19 in Wuhan in late March 2020, China had implemented a... more Since the successful containment of COVID-19 in Wuhan in late March 2020, China had implemented a nationwide highly stringent and restrictive zero-COVID policy to manage the pandemic until the sudden swift away from it in early December 2022. How did the Chinese Communist Party discursively construct it as a ‘normal’ and legitimate policy? Using interpretivism and poststructuralist political theory, this paper examines how Chinese political elites constructed a discourse of danger for the COVID pandemic, with the dominant discursive narratives full of xenophobic and nationalist languages. The discourse framed ‘foreigners’ as ‘threats’ to Chinese people’s health, advocated that China should rely on home-made vaccines and medicines and, more importantly, argued that the Chinese Communist rule demonstrates ‘institutional superiority’ over Western governance. This xenophobic and nationalist discourse has lingered on after the dismantling of the zero-COVID policy. There are grounds for u...
Order, Contestation and Ontological Security-Seeking in the South China Sea, 2020
The construction of the US order in East Asia in the early decades of the post-war era was influe... more The construction of the US order in East Asia in the early decades of the post-war era was influenced by a series of events unforeseen during the key international conferences in 1943–1945. The extension of the containment doctrine to Asia and the US engagement in armed conflicts on the Asian mainland led to the overturning of the pro-China arrangements agreed at Cairo, Potsdam and Yalta, and to the building of a ‘liberal’, anti-communist order in the region. The US ontological insecurity created by the loss of China to the communists was to be rooted out domestically and (re)produced in a strong anti-communist identity. Anti-communism became the criterion for cultural acceptability and participation in the American-led order, premised on distinctly binary representations of ‘good’ versus ‘evil’ and ‘tyranny’ versus ‘freedom’. A Chinese communist-dominated region would be completely delegitimised as a threat to American efforts to build a secure and viable liberal international order.
Order, Contestation and Ontological Security-Seeking in the South China Sea, 2020
This chapter asserts that the main obstacle to striking a grand bargain between China and the US ... more This chapter asserts that the main obstacle to striking a grand bargain between China and the US over their competing order-building projects is the ontological insecurity each of them is facing. Built on a socially constructed discourse and narrative that the territories were a historically undisputable part of China until France and Japan invaded them, territorial irredentism is essential for contemporary China to validate its national identity as a re-emerging East Asian power. The US believes that its national identity as a liberal hegemon is threatened by a revisionist, non-liberal China. To preserve the rules-based liberal order is crucial for it to keep its national identity intact. To make its order-building legitimate, China must act and speak in accordance with publicly accepted norms and rules. This would require China to be committed to contemporary international norms and rules rather than to the vaguely defined historic rights and the unsubstantiated nine-dash-line map.
This chapter considers how the negotiations over the United Nations Convention on the Law of the ... more This chapter considers how the negotiations over the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) in 1973–1982 exacerbated the unsettled status of the islands, and since then, how it has given room for regional states to lay claims to them under the protection of international law. While UNCLOS introduces the notion and practice of the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and extends continental shelf rights, allowing littoral states, including China, to exercise extended control over the seas beyond their borders, it makes no reference to historic rights and cognate rights, which are, however, at the heart of China’s territorial claims. In the midst of the UNCLOS III negotiations, the US began to take steps to enforce freedom of navigation and overflight unilaterally. Its Freedom of Navigation Operations programme was set up in 1979 to prevent states from making ‘excessive maritime claims’.
China’s rewriting of the regional maritime order focuses on re-interpreting UNCLOS on the legalit... more China’s rewriting of the regional maritime order focuses on re-interpreting UNCLOS on the legality of innocent passage of foreign warships through the territorial sea and of military-oriented activities of a foreign state in a coastal state’s EEZ. China also argues that its historic rights to the South China Sea, albeit vaguely defined, predated UNCLOS. Believing that UNCLOS is not the sole legal instrument in tackling maritime conflicts, China has asserted its intention to lead the development of international maritime norms. A change to the current understanding of the EEZ in China’s favour would substantially weaken US capacity to provide public goods. A Chinese Monroe Doctrine has also emerged in practice, which would dislodge the US from East Asia. China’s blue-water naval aspirations as well as militarisation of the occupied islands and attempts to exclude the US from regional talks on the code of conduct are clear signs of this strategy.
Order, Contestation and Ontological Security-Seeking in the South China Sea, 2020
The theoretical framework focuses on the interlocking relationship between order-building, ontolo... more The theoretical framework focuses on the interlocking relationship between order-building, ontological security and legitimation practices for both incumbent and aspiring hegemons. It conceptualises international order as a hierarchical political formation that requires a constantly renegotiated social compact among member states to legitimately settle the rules and arrangements. Renegotiation is open to contestation when an emergent aspiring power harbours intentions to dislodge the existing leading state. An ontological security lens exposes the need for consistency in the narratives and routines that states use to sustain predictability and certainty in the (re)production of collective self-identity. Since order-building reflects the identity and preferences of the incumbent and aspiring hegemons, problems arise when one’s identity is not recognised by the other, creating ontological dissonance in autobiographical narratives and forcing an emotional reaction to perceptions of past unjust treatment. Ontological security-seeking states are compelled to order territorial space to maintain their own ontological security.
ABSTRACT The gross output value of China's rural industry grew rapidly from 38.5 billion... more ABSTRACT The gross output value of China's rural industry grew rapidly from 38.5 billion yuan in 1978 to 8245.6 billion yuan in 2000. An average annual growth rate of 21.8 percent, measured in real terms, was recorded for the rural industry for the period. One of the plausible ...
Page 1. Journal of Contemporary China (2000), 9(25), 513534 Business Government Relations in In... more Page 1. Journal of Contemporary China (2000), 9(25), 513534 Business Government Relations in Industrializing Rural China: a principalagent perspective CHARLES CL KWONG AND PAK K. LEE* This paper explains why ...
The Third Plenum of the 14th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in November 1... more The Third Plenum of the 14th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in November 1993 decided in principle for a comprehensive reform of central-provincial fiscal relations. Soon after the Plenum, the central government announced that the new fiscal system, known as the tax-assignment system (fenshuizhi), would be implemented nation-wide in 1994. With the aim of providing adequate revenues for government, particularly the central government, by revamping central-provincial revenue-sharing arrangements, the reform is to “[change] the current fiscal contractual responsibility system of local authorities to a tax assignment system …” and to “gradually increase the percentage of fiscal income in the gross national product (GNP) and rationally determine the proportion between central and local fiscal income.”
This book is the result of a conference hosted by the North American Chinese Sociologists Associa... more This book is the result of a conference hosted by the North American Chinese Sociologists Association in Toronto, Canada, in August 1997. It begins with an introductory chapter by Alvin Y. So, and is followed by 15 papers. The papers are divided into four parts, which deal with the roles economic institutions, gender, social networks and the overseas Chinese play in the integration of the three Chinese states.
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Papers by Pak K. Lee