INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CHINA STUDIES

21st Century U.S. Policy on an Emergent China: From Strategic Constrainment to Strategic Competition in the Indo-Pacific Region

Renato Cruz De Castro — Mon, 31 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0800

During his second term as U.S. president, former President Barack Obama made the Asia-Pacific region the focal point of American strategic attention. In November 2011, he announced the U.S. pivot to Asia. His goal was to constrain China from easing out the U.S. as East Asia’s strategic offshore balancer. Contrary to expectations, the 2016 election of Donald Trump, did not spell the end of the strategic rebalancing to Asia. For the Trump Administration, the Asia-Pacific remains a top security priority because of China’s naval expansion, island-building activities, and militarization efforts in the South China Sea threaten not only the freedom of navigation but also the rules-based international order. Consequently, the Trump Administration has directed the U.S. military to proceed with the rebalancing of its forces and their capabilities to the Asia-Pacific region. This decision indicates that, despite its initial opposition to the rebalancing policy to Asia, the current administration believes that on the basis of geography, interests and values, the U.S. is a Pacific power which plays an important role in shaping the future of this dynamic region. This is because the Trump Administration has engaged China in a strategic competition in the Indo-Pacific region. In conclusion, this article warns that the Trump Administration`s policy of engaging China in a strategic competition will set back the hands of time to the U.S.-Sino conflict in the early years of the Cold War, when American and Chinese values, interests and polices were simply adversarial without any convergence. However, this 21st Sino-U.S. competition is different because both countries’ materiel/technological capabilities and global reach are considerably greater
than they were in the 1950s.

In Praise of China: China in the Eyes of Pakistani Diplomats

Ngeow Chow-Bing, Pervaiz Ali Mahesar, Roy Anthony Rogers — Mon, 31 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0800

This article reviews the writings on China by four former ambassadors of Pakistan, three of them ambassadors to China. Their writings display a remarkably positive image of China. Although written usually after retirement of their diplomatic service, their views of China have long been shaped when they were in the service. In this sense, these writings portrayed, and indicated, at least among a section of the professional diplomatic corps of Pakistan, how Pakistani elite understand China. In turn, this also reflects, at a wider level, the positive discourse on China among the influential opinion makers in Pakistan. This article adopts the constructivist approach, which
gives theoretical importance to ideational factors in the understanding of a country’s foreign policy. Pakistan’s China policy, while on the one hand driven by realist and geopolitical factors, is also shaped by a positive discourse on China, in which this article examines through the writings of several former diplomats of Pakistan.

The Quotidian Concern and Racial Belonging of Brazilian Chinese: A Study of BrasilCN.com

Gabriel F.Y. Tsang — Mon, 31 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0800

Benedict Anderson regards nation as a socially constructed “imagined community.” The imaginative nature of the nation implies the possibility of shifting personal belonging to a geographically identified area from reality to a virtual network shared by the people who hold the same selfidentification. The development of websites that serve Chinese diaspora reinforces the overseas Chinese’s emotional and epistemological connection to mainland China. By analyzing BrasilCN.com 巴西華人網, which is the first Chinese-language website that has offered news, quotidian information and forum communication to Brazilian Chinese since 2009, this research paper will structurally reveal how its selected provision of knowledge related to China and its forum platform for group conversation deliver a sense of racial support that differentiates the users from local Brazilians. It holds an argument that the intersectionality of the identity of Brazilian Chinese causes the hybridity of the content of BrazilCN.com and creates a demand for connecting between two sides, instead of solely solving daily problems of living in Brazil or reminiscent problems of being physically isolated from China. The posted information reveals that the users’ requests related to Brazil and China are imbalanced. There are tensions between localization
and cultural estrangement.

Are China’s Service Exports Accurately Measured? Implications of an Alternative Measurement Approach

Dong Hang-Hang, Yong Chen-Chen — Mon, 31 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0800

As economic development advances, a country’s service sector grows. With globalization, this growth is often accompanied by the growth of trade in services. China is a good example. After three decades of spectacular economic advance, its service trade is now one of the world’s largest, but so is its service trade deficit. How did this come about, given China’s competitive strength in the export of goods? Second, is this deficit a statistical anomaly, i.e. with China participating in global supply chains, how well do gross exports reflect the true value of China’s service exports? Third, what is the real competitiveness of China’s service exports? This study examines
these questions by first reviewing the structure and trends in China’s service trade using official statistics. It then re-estimates these exports using the “forward linkage value-added method” to compare with gross exports. The third question is addressed by calculating revealed comparative advantage (RCA) indexes based on gross as well as value-added service exports. Using 2000-2014 data, the results show that no matter which method is applied, China’s service exports have weak comparative advantage but rising RCAs show China’s competitive situation improving. Also, gross export values overestimate the RCA compared to value-added values. A number of policy implications arise from these findings.

Self-rated Life Satisfaction of the Oldest-old in China: Do Intergenerational Relations Matter?

Ng Sor Tho — Mon, 31 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0800

In 2010, China had a 21 million population of age 80 or over. This group of oldest-old adults deserves attention on their quality of life as long as the improvement on life expectancy is expected to continue. Thus, more and more people in China will move into this group. This paper examines the effects of intergenerational relations on the self-rated life satisfaction of the oldestold in China by using the 2012 Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey data, a total of 6,530 respondents aged 80 or over. The dependent variable is from the responses of respondents on how do they rate their life. Various socio-demographic and health variables are included in the model
as controlled variables. Intergenerational relations variables include living arrangement, family interactions and intergenerational transfer. Results from the SPSS GENLIN ordinal regression model showed that living arrangements and intergenerational transfers were statistically significant in affecting the self-rated life satisfaction after controlling for socio-demographic and health variables, while family interactions in terms of visited and/or contacted by children was not significant. The feeling of being cared for among those who lived with family members and interdependence between generations have a positive effect on self-rated life satisfaction. The traditional role of family in supporting the older persons continued to be an important contributor to the self-rated life satisfaction. With the exodus of the young to the cities, family care and support are likely to be eroding in the future. Hence, there is a need to enhance community support for the oldest-old .

Book Review - Fang, Chuanglin and Yu, Danlin, China’s New Urbanization: Development Paths, Blueprints and Patterns

Qianyi Wang — Mon, 31 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0800

Fang, Chuanglin and Yu, Danlin, China’s New Urbanization: Development Paths, Blueprints and Patterns, Beijing: Springer and Science Press, 2016, xix + 329 pages. ISBN 978-3-662-57010-4 (softcover)