Abstracts of the Annual BACS Conference 2005
Shifting Boundaries: Nei and Wai in Chinese Culture
Nottingham University, September 2005

In the November 2004 issue of the Journal of Asian Studies, I published a "state of the field" article covering about 500 recent scholarly publications about women in China’s long twentieth century. This paper takes the form of an extended afterthought and a series of suggestions for the study of women in recent Chinese history, made in a spirit of creeping discomfort. Making gender visible and audible cannot be considered a finished project. If we take seriously what we have learned in the past three decades, however, we cannot continue to mine "the gender field" as though it were a space with fixed boundaries. It may be more useful to regard "the field" not as a space but rather as a conjuncture. The emergence, intensity, and complexity of gender as a conjuncture are not fixed; for scholars, these are and must continue to be entangled with the tracing out of other processes of subject formation.

This talk is organized around four questions: First, why this explosion of scholarship, why now, and why in the China field? Second, what has this new scholarship illuminated, and what has it possibly caused us to look away from? Third, how can we keep this area of inquiry open, even risking its dissolution, rather than delineating its borders in ways that seal it shut? Fourth, if we were to require a rigorous permeability, or imagine an object of inquiry that emerges, changes, and dissolves over time, what sorts of new questions might we bring into view?

How do rural women fare when their villages are absorbed by urban sprawl? This article draws on Amartya Sen's concept of capabilities to conduct a preliminary analysis of the impact of the institutional changes accompanying the enclosure of village lands byurban areas on rural women. Using interview material collected in three cities in Zhejiang province, press reports, government and Women's Federation documents, and the rich secondary literature on women in China, the paper argues that institutional changes associated with urbanization are not enhancing thel capability of first generation women incorporated into China's urban precincts. Certainly, some dimensions of women's well-being are improved. However, rural women are excluded from participating in all stages of land-requisitioning planning, negotiation and management. The equal property rights to which they were entitled as resident members of a village collective are not transformed into equal ownership of private assets in urban areas. They do not receive the same training, employment opportunities, and business opportunities as male villagers. Moreover, they encounter deep-seated prejudices that discourage their participation in neighbourhood political and social life. The article concludes by discussing how the types of capabilities invoked by Sen's concept reveal not only the ambiguous effects of urbanization on rural women, but also the liberal ideological limitations of the capabilities concept.

Dr Zhang Xiaoling (Nottingham)
Seeking an Effective Local Public Sphere—Chinese media at the Grassroots Level?

In trying to capture key signs of the changes in Chinese society since China engaged itself in a process of rapid transition from a centrally planned to a market-based capitalistic economic system, much research has been carried out on the transformation of Chinese media, which occupy a central position within democratic societies acting as mirrors of ideas and the catalyst for serious public debate. The main focus of study, however, has remained on ‘the national, the regional, and the global’, but is ‘still missing the local and the interior of China’ (LEE, 2003: 25). This paper argues that to fully understand the changes within Chinese society and Chinese mass media, it is essential to examine the grassroots media. This paper is therefore more than an attempt to offer the missing link in the intellectual vibrancy of the emerging field of Chinese media studies (Ibid.: 24). It also examines the role local media play in reshaping the Chinese society in a dynamic, expanding economy and an intact ruling communist party, thus contributing to the ongoing discussion about the possibilities of civil society in China.

The questions this paper asks are the following: 1. while their primary role as party’s tongue and throat must not be questioned, given that media outlets in Sea County are not so close geographically to the political centre, and due to their relatively smaller size, could local media function as an interactive medium that encourages a participatory communication process? In other words, could they constitute more autonomy from the state, and thus become more effective channels for participation and representation? 2. What role do grassroots media outlets play in reshaping the state-society relations in a dynamic, expanding economy and an intact ruling communist party? Do they contribute to the development of a more autonomous and democratic Chinese society?

For the study of local media outlets, Sea County in Zhejiang Province is selected for case study. Cross-disciplinary (interviews, content analysis, observation of meetings) methodologies are employed. By giving voice to cadres, journalists, correspondents and other media practitioners at the bottom level of the media hierarchy in China, and by examining media outlets, old and new, in Sea County, this study is hoped to shed some light on the ongoing transformation in the Chinese society and mass media.

Findings from this case study show that Chinese media outlets at grassroots level are tightly bound to the state through three major mechanisms. The first is the centralized control of the media, through their institutional and structural nature. The deep penetration of the party-state within media organisations through double-posting of personnel ensures that they remain the apparatus of the party at all times. The second mechanism is the reporting system from the grassroots level to the central level, which was handed down from Mao’s time. The third one is the drive to construct a positive image to outsiders for political and commercial reasons, which highly motivates local media to sing praise songs to outsiders. The regulatory demands, commercial imperatives and media working practices within which local media staff currently operates powerfully inhibit them to develop the media into an arena for anything approaching rational critical debate.

Shanghai, as in other big cities in China, has seen the construction of a profusion of new shopping malls. These new consumer environments are a potent signifier in the renewal of narratives of China's economic and social transformation in the post-Mao, post-Tiananmen period. They represent an excess of space, productive capacity and consumer desire.

The mall is much theorized in western cultural studies as a key location of the post-modern, in work from Benjamin, Baudrilliard, Augé and others. In this theorization, the mall is understood a kind of space which reorganizes social relations around the subject as a consumer, and, in Augé's notion of the "non-place", operates as a richly encoded semiotic structure which produces a form of jouissance in the individuated anonymity of those who are able to read it successfully.

The paper takes some of these arguments and suggests that the mall in China might then be understood as a a radical reformation of nei and wai. The mall interiorizes exterior space, and perhaps collapses the distinction between them, as it, following Baudrillard’s "moebian compulsion", conjoins desire and commodity consumption in a space constructed of libidinal surfaces.

The paper suggests, however, that although the mall may be a new kind of social space for China, it is nevertheless fraught with political implications as it continues to function within a hybridized capitalist-authoritarian regime. The paper concludes with an implicit critique of the universalizing imperative of post-modern theorizing by arguing that the mall in China is located within an historical trajectory, and, in its very excess, expresses a particular self- consciousness about China’s (post-)modernity. The paper proposes that the mall may be a site of self-reflexivity within the discourses of China's "transformation", the possibility of which suggests the need to re-examine exactly where the boundaries of nei and wai lie.

In an ordinary Chinese village the villagers’ lives go up and down from time to time in line with the rest of China. For my fieldwork villagers the process of finding ways to cope with these changes and making their life better involved constantly maintaining relationships between themselves and others including the state. They believe the current living environments of free market economy and loosened political control by the state were in part of their own creation. In other words, the villagers believe that they and the state can change and shape each other in a reciprocal way over a long period. My fieldwork note shows that bottom-up gift exchange, a kind of guanxi (Yang 1994 and Yan 1996) took less than one third of the actions in seeking resources from the state and private sources in the villagers’ everyday life. The majority of related actions are embedded in implicit cultural models and patterns of social relationships. They actually hold rural society together at the village level and provide a space and sphere to negotiate and re-negotiate with the state. The real power which holds the local society together and changes relationships between the state and the villagers is invisible. It can be seen from an analysis of the changes of different types of relationships (wanglai) via intermediaries, e.g. village cadres’ work with lishang -wanglai (礼尚往来) -- as analytical tool based my PhD study. This paper will show how relationships change vertically, both bottom-up and top-down, between the state and the villagers through village cadres’ work; it will also show how relationships change horizontally, shift boundaries of inner (nei) and outer (wai), between villagers and village cadres.

The fieldwork carried out in a Chinese metropolitan city, Guangzhou, has shown that many of the urban dwelling Chinese elders live in the conflict between their internal world (mostly the traditional family beliefs) and their outer environment, namely the living state and the relationship with their children. Some of the conflict leads to their emotional disturbance and even physical complaints. The fieldwork also reveals that emotional care is a neglected aspect in most modern Chinese elder care practice. These findings motivated the author to study the causes of emotional problems experienced by Chinese senior citizens through a cultural and psychological approach. The paper displays some examples of the conflict, and these examples demonstrate the important role of emotional care for the elderly. Traditional Chinese philosophy of cultivating inner power and the modern science of holistic well-being shed light on the significance of emotional health. Based on these theories, the author discusses how to improve the quality of China’s current elder care by implementing emotional or mental care. The author believes that the key to effective emotional care for the urban Chinese elderly is to mediate the conflict between their inner beliefs and outer environment. At the end, the paper suggests some methods of putting emotional care into practice. The discussion can be applied to diverse care settings, not simply for professional care workers, but for everyone involved in the care of elderly people.

Every two years the contemporary art world meets for a sort of global summit at the Venice Biennial, often setting trends for the years to come. Since 1995 Taiwan has represented itself through a national Pavilion. From 1999 on the exhibition project has been chosen by a jury. The requirements for an exhibition to represent Taiwan in Venice are two: first, both curator and artists have to have a ROC passport; second, the project should establish a dialogue with the international art scene.

This writer would argue that hidden in the bureaucratic rationale applied by the Taipei Fine Arts Museum there are several filters of exclusion and inclusion present, which reflect a general attitude towards internationalisation which prefers intermediaries, translators and representatives of the outer world to the actual inclusion of foreign elements already present in the inside.

A rather surprising effect of the exclusion of all foreigners residing in Taiwan from the participation at the project of national representation, is that it leads to a concept of a nation almost completely detached from an actual territory, or to the phantasm of a pure Chinese race wandering around the globe, connected to each other through an imaginary blood lineage whose proof is a ROC passport.

The stated goals of the participation at the Venice Biennial of visual arts is the "dialogue with the international art scene". At first look, this might seem like a great opening to the outside world. Curiously, the word "dialogue with" is often translated into "to keep up with", thus introducing another gauge of exclusion into the project of national representation. This excludes both artistic media which are perceived as out of fashion, as well as artists which are too "old" to be perceived as representing the latest trend.

I would like to argue that behind this bureaucratic nationalism and its pattern of exclusion and inclusion based on a logic of race, age and artistic medium is a general pattern described by Foucault and Carol Duncan as early modernism in art administration.

The development of Chinese export painting in the 18th century provides a significant perspective from which to consider the ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ juxtaposition/complementarity in the context of the Chinese socio-cultural milieu and foreign relations of this period.

Following the official closure and resistance to the attempts of diplomatic, commercial and cultural penetration by western countries, the only foreigners admitted at that time within Chinese boundaries – though with strict limitations – were mainly missionaries and merchants. The latter were allowed to trade – for a maximum of six months every year – exclusively in Canton. Among other products, they increasingly demanded works of art – paintings, ceramics, lacquer-ware, etc. – purposely executed for them to take away as souvenirs, or to resell abroad. The mostly unnamed artists working to the foreigners’ order operated on the borderline between nei and wai, and their artefacts are the result of the intermingling and combination of forces pushing and pulling on either side of these boundaries.

Export paintings, in their various forms, are a particularly evident example of this phenomenon. By reading their distinctive hybrid, yet authentic features, it is possible to recognise the interaction and blurred division – rather than the separation and sharp opposition – between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ elements. The ‘inner’ model is represented by the rigid canon of courtly painting and long-lived local artistic traditions, while the ‘outer’ model is expressed through the artistic production of the western missionaries-painters at the emperor’s service in Beijing, and the demands of the merchants in Canton based on western artistic conventions.

This artistic development was influenced not only by the Chinese foreign policy, but also by a series of internal circumstances, such as the emergence of a new class of professional painters in cities like Yangzhou, and the political aversion towards the Manchu authority in the Guandong province. The artistic choices regarding export painting, thus, reflect a general dynamic atmosphere of inside-outside interplay, flows and shifts in 18th-century China.

This paper applies the concepts of nei and wai to the PRC’s current quest for modernisation. Specifically, it explores how internal and external players − defined by their ethnic and territorial affiliation with the Chinese nation − are incorporated into the current modernisation project pursued by the Chinese government. By tracing the roles of the overseas Chinese and ethnic minorities in the Chinese modernisation project, I explore how the element of ethnicity has been utilised in the modernisation endeavour and how it affects the territorial and symbolic boundaries of the Chinese nation.

This paper draws upon the official discourse on modernisation and the Central government’s policies towards the overseas Chinese and ethnic minorities since the start of the reforms in the 1970s to argue that China implements an essentially unitary modernisation model. This manifests in labeling the diverse minority populations in China with the generalized derogatory characteristics which also project onto the nature of the policies towards ethnic minorities. The combined forces of the dominant rhetoric and the government policies place ethnic minorities outside the framework of the official version of modernisation. At the same time, the official perspective seriously considers and indiscriminately reaches out to the overseas Chinese, who are often presented in the official discourse as a driving force of Chinese modernisation. The nature of the links with the overseas Chinese, established through the series of policies based on the assumption of the common ethnic origins, increasingly goes beyond an economic domain to embrace politics and ideology.

Chun-Yi Lee (Nottingham)
Shifting boundaries: The ambiguous role of Taiwanese businesses which invest in China

Since the Taiwanese government lifted martial law in 1987, the government has gradually released its restrictions on investment in China. From 1987 until the end of July 2004, the number of Taiwanese investment projects in China has accumulated to 63,000; the actual utilised Taiwanese capital has reached 380 hundred million US dollars. It could be suggested that the substantive economic relation between China and Taiwan is impressive. Nevertheless, the role of Taiwanese business in China has been ambiguous for the long term investment process. The central question of this paper is: How does the Chinese government evaluate Taiwanese business people? Are Taiwanese businesses identified as domestic investors (Nei) or foreign investors (Wai)?

In order to answer this question, this paper will discuss three characteristics of Taiwanese business in China. First of all, under Chinese investment law, compatriots from Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau enjoy the same preferential conditions as other foreign investors. Therefore, Taiwanese businesses should be identified as foreign investors in China. However, if Taiwanese businesses violate the law, the Chinese government is more flexible with Taiwanese businesses then other foreign investors. Secondly, Taiwanese businesses in China have resort to dual-governmental bureaux once they have problems. For foreign investors, the only governmental bureau they have access to is the Commission of Foreign Economic Relations and Trade (CFERT). Taiwanese businesses have a second channel, the Taiwanese Affairs Office (TAO). Chinese governmental involvement in Taiwanese business organisations is the third characteristic. In every Taiwanese Entrepreneur Association (TEA), there are one or two staff from Chinese local government, who serve as deputy chairmen.

I suggest that a possible explanation for these characteristics of Taiwanese business in China is a deliberate strategy of the Chinese government, which utilises economic power as a bargaining chip in the cross-strait relationship.

This paper examines fiction written in English and in Chinese written and set in Hong Kong since 1941. None of the six key works under examination takes privacy as its main subject, but each shows insights into ways in which privacy is understood and valued in modern Hong Kong. These works are A Many-Splendoured Thing (1952) by Han Suyin, The World of Suzie Wong (1957) by Richard Lakin Mason, The Brave White Flag (1961) by James Allan Ford, Qingcheng zhi lian [Love in a Fallen City] (1943) by Zhang Ailing, Xiang wo zheyang de yige nüzi [A girl like me] (1984) by Xi Xi and Yanzhi kou [Rouge] (1985) by Li Bihua. Four of these works have been made into films, and although in each case the film is more famous than the novel, only the original is under examination in this study. The question whether there is a distinct Hong Kong sense of privacy will be examined in the context of European and Chinese privacy concepts. Among other topics touched on briefly are the terminology used in Chinese and English for describing privacy and the relevance of Hong Kong fiction to the study of privacy in Hong Kong (or of fiction to the study of privacy anywhere).

Geopolitical dislocation is a prominent feature of Chinese modernity. The political insecurity of Taiwan and Hong Kong has led many citizens to seek residency rights in the West, which often necessitates part of the family spending extended periods abroad, predominantly in the United States. With the rise of business links, it has also become commonplace for families based in Taiwan or Hong Kong to find that a significant proportion of the main breadwinners’ time is spent in PRC, where the rest of the family rarely, if ever, goes.

The fiction of two contemporary women writers from Taiwan, Chen Ruoxi 陈若曦 and Li Li 李黎, presents, through the eyes of female characters, depictions of Taiwanese and Hong Kong men for whom this geopolitical dislocation affords new opportunity for (and justification of) marital infidelity.

My reading shows that while the authors are critical of the sometimes egregious exploitation of women who have generally accepted a subservient role within the patriarchal family hierarchy, both Chen and Li are ultimately conciliatory: marriage is an all-important institution, and female characters value preservation of their social and cultural roles within that institution more than autonomy and independence, even where this involves self-abnegation and acceptance of their husbands’ infidelities.

A consistent part of the literature on China produced in the last decade reveals a tendency to assume and accept a priori the existence of the category of "public intellectuals" as an internal (nei) element of the Chinese "public space" in different stages of the twentieth century and, in particular, in the post-Mao era. In this paper I focus on the language politics of selected significant articles discussing the social construction and the role of "Chinese public intellectuals (zhongguo gonggong zhishifenzi)", especially those written in the last few years by the scholars Li Zhuang, Tu Weiming, Xu Jilin, Yu Richang, and Zhu Suli. My intention is to analyze these sources against CCP policies towards intellectuals, ranging from Yan’an to the recent Publicity Department’s order (issued in November 2004) aimed at banning reports and discussions on the topic of "public intellectuals."

My purpose is two-fold:

1. evaluating if the label "public intellectual" is only a derivative category (wai) --of Western origin-- or it can be historically recognized as a representative function of a precise socio-political constituency, existing inside (nei) the Chinese "public space", and in harmony with the Chinese habitus;

2. shedding a new light on a possible definition of "public intellectual" as somebody who remains an outsider (wai), since he strives to resist to the hegemonic discourse of public authority, but "tries to speak the truth" to and for (i.e. wei more than nei) a public audience.

My argument is that when one attempts to define different types of intellectuals in the Chinese context (as Xu Jilin, for example, does when he analyzes the three types of intellectuals: "traditional", "organic", and "specific"), in order to construct the "public nature (gonggongxing)" of the intellectual, it is first necessary to retrace the self-positioning of the intellectuals and the nature of the "public." This approach leads to an exploration of the interstices between "nei" and "wai" which tends to promote the co-extensiveness of intellectuals and public in a more fluid relation.

The modern nation depends in great part on the construction of boundaries to the imagined community. In times of external pressure and war, those boundaries acquire greater moral weight as well as practical and political significance. Membership of the national community demands defence of those boundaries in terms of sovereignty and territorial integrity, and those who are perceived as ignoring those boundaries or failing in their defence may be constructed as internal Others or as imperfect/unworthy members of the nation.

Recent scholarship on the Second Sino-Japanese War – such as Rana Mitter’s work on Manchuria, and Timothy Brook’s 2005 study of wartime central China – has offered intriguing insights into the dynamics of Chinese ‘collaboration’ under Japanese occupation. However, the reasoning of those who collaborated before occupation, out of choice rather than necessity, is still imperfectly understood.

Hence this paper, in which I will consider those who, through actual or proposed collaboration with external powers before occupation, appeared to violate the boundary between nei and wai by inviting or condoning external engagement with China’s internal affairs. Through an examination of ‘collaborators’’ public and private writings, I will explore their constructions of the nei/wai boundaries and the terms on which these might be renegotiated.

The debates of the Hundred Schools (c. 400-221 BC) mirrored the armed conflicts of the Warring States, in a China beset by the unrealised ideal of unity. Problems of human nature (xìng), mind (xin) and essential being (qíng), representing the ‘internal’ (nèi), confronted the physical world of external (wài) things. Mohist idealism defined goodness by intent to ‘profit/benefit’ (lì) mankind, irrespective of actual results, subject to ‘external dynamics’. In this Mohism was close to the Confucian Mencius (c. 300 BC). Yet Mencius rejected Mohism utilitarianism, which equated profit with ‘right’ (yì), on the one hand, as well as hedonist naturalism, which disregarded morality and Right as external. Mencius claimed that only ‘Humanity and Right (rényì), not profit, will restore social harmony and achieve peace.

Curiously, for his faith in innate goodness, Mencius in turn comes under attack, from another Confucian. Xún Zî agrees that Right is basic to humanity, but concludes that it is the ‘artificial’ and man-made (wèi) in society that is good and necessary, whereas human nature itself is evil (xìng’è). Thus, desires for external things are Heaven-given but, if not curbed internally by the mind, will lead to disaster. Thus Guân Zî’s Internal Cultivation says: "within the mind is another mind" (a conscience?). Xún Zî argues that Ritual, the royal Way and Law, were instituted by man to establish dynamics of social organization and control. Their function divides (fen) and to moderate excess.

This paper examines the conflict between Chinese and Western cultures and how this affects the national security of China. In particular, the spread of human rights and liberal democracy, backed by the military might of the US military, is viewed by China as particular dangerous. George Bush’s application of "regime change" policies in Iraq and Afghanistan are cases in point. As the bastion of Confucianism and Oriental civilisation, China perceives such US policies as detrimental not only to the existence of non-Western cultures but more importantly to the sovereignty of other states.

Essentially, China views Western culture as alien and incompatible with its political system. If Western values such as human rights and liberal democracy are disseminated widely to the Chinese masses, this will generate calls for an end to the CCP’s political monopoly, as the 1989 Tiananmen event showed. Inevitably, Chinese leaders will promote Confucian culture, which stresses adherence to the status quo rather than change and paternalism rather than liberalism. Along with Communism and nationalism, Confucianism to some extent underpins the ruling ideology of the Beijing regime.

The current challenge for Chinese leaders is how to curtail the spread of Western culture in the Information Age. At the same time, as China becomes increasingly drawn to the capitalist orbit in the search for economic resources for its national development, it is bound to become more susceptible to the penetration of Western culture.

PARALLEL SESSION 2: China Postgraduate Network Panel

The aim of the research is to enhance our understanding of the interaction between China’s recent rural-urban migration and urban labour market development, by examining rural migrants’ labour market experience in Shanghai’s manufacturing enterprises. This research proposal aims to sum up the literature which has been reviewed in the first year of the PhD program, and to lay down a plan for future work. China has been historically well known for her massive rural labour surplus, produced under the institutionalised rural-urban divisions and regional segmentation. Many institutional restrictions of rural-urban and inter-regional migration were established during the central-planning period. Since economic reform in 1978, migration restrictions have gradually eased and about 140 million people move to cities, seeking employment and higher incomes in the urban areas; rural-urban wage differentials primarily sponsoring migration. Positive consequences of migration exist, yet divisions between migrants and residents are obvious. Migrants are treated differently from their urban counterparts in terms of occupational attainment, status, conditions, wages and social benefits. They are ‘outsiders’ in the urban areas. This research aims to examine the extent to which rural migrants are disadvantaged in urban labour market, and to check whether discrimination exists against them, by measurements of wage, occupation and working conditions.

The post-missionary transformation of Protestantism in China: the re-forming of congregations in Fuzhou area, from the 1970s to the present
Chen-yang Kao (Lancaster)

This research is aimed at exploring the configuration of Protestant religious ‘field’ in contemporary China. I am particularly interested in investigating how the mode of evangelisation during the Cultural Revolution re-shaped the fashion and ability of social reproduction of Protestantism, how different congregations, of both ‘aboveground’ and ‘underground’, respond to their circumscribed social positions in the public sphere since the ‘open policy ‘was carried out, and how Christian communities have interacted with wider social changes.

This research is guided by the ethnographic study tradition and oral history methodology. During July and August 2004, I conduct the first fieldwork in four provinces; the second fieldwork focusing on Fuzhou area was carried out during April and June 2005. I interviewed a number of church leaders, lay believers, non-church-goers and attended to a variety of church leader training courses and church meetings.

The preliminary data analysis indicates that Protestantism has been compelled to withdraw from making public significance among other social institutions into centring on fulfilling ‘religious’ function, including healing and exorcism, thus becoming a strong competitor of traditional folk religion and deepening its indigenisation. Under intermittent political suppression, the survival and maintenance of local Protestantism have been largely dependent on unprivileged women and the social-religious network they form. Finally, different Protestant traditions still emerge implicitly, with various ways of relating itself to locality and globality, constituting a certain degree of heterogeneity in Protestant identity formation; each type of identity has its own potential for performing in particular social venue within the market.

Third Generation Blues? The Differing Experiences Of British- And Australian-Born Chinese
Alastair Kennedy (Kings College London)

Up until the mid-nineteenth century the Chinese overseas were predominantly illegal emigrants from China’s southern littoral, particularly Kwangtung and Fukien provinces. Thereafter they were joined by legal emigrants seeking either a better livelihood by sojourning abroad (the gold rushes in USA and Australia) or a Western education (UK, Europe, Australasia and North America), or, more recently, to escape from political, racial or economic upheaval in China or South East Asian countries (Indonesia and Vietnam).

Both Britain and Australia have significant Chinese populations, the majority of whom regard Kwangtung (particularly the areas bordering Hong Kong and Macao) as their natal and cultural homeland. Because of their longstanding presence within these countries, there has been considerable intermarriage with non-Chinese and there are now many part-Chinese within these societies.

My proposed thesis has three themes. Firstly, it examines the differing historical experiences of the Chinese in Britain and Australia, comparing and contrasting those factors that have shaped the cultural identities they profess today. Second, it looks for evidence in both countries of what Parker described as a developing British Chinese identity comparable to those of the British Afro-Caribbean and Anglo-Asian immigrant communities and, in Australia, what Inglis identifies as the opposite, an extensive segmentation of the Australian Chinese population resulting in the lack of a unique Australian Chinese identity. Third, drawing on the evidence provided by the first two themes, it attempts to identify and explain the contemporary attitudinal differences of the third and later generation Chinese in each country, and to consider how their ‘Chinese-ness’ might be passed on to future generations.

Female migration in China has been a much neglected topic in contemporary China study, even more neglected however, is the migration of minority women from ethnic autonomous regions. My research turns its attention to a politically less controversal minority group, the Miao, who resides mainly in Guizhou, a province constantly being evaluated as one of the poorest provinces in China. My research is based on my fieldwork in a Miao minority village in 2002-2004, the purpose of the research is to explore the effects of migration on both the migrants themselves and those women who left behind in the community. The research consisted of a household survey as well as in-depth interviews with over 60 Miao women in the village. In my report I shall first introduce the village where I did my research, some of its socio-economic indicators, female migrants’ demographic characteristics and then I will go on to explore the extent of female migration from the village, what determines the minority women’s migration, how they make the decision to migrate, what is the difference between the married and the single migrants, what forms and patterns of migration are the minority women likely to take, whether their migration pattern is very different from Han’s. What kind of contribution women’s migration is able to make to their families and if there are any drawbacks. Lastly I shall briefly explore the impact of migration on the migrants themselves and especially if migration has caused a change of marriage attitude in the minority women and whether this will lead to a drain of women from the minority region.

The debate on WTO in Chinese media
Valeria Zanier

The present paper aims at presenting a comprehensive picture of the debate on China’s accession to WTO in the period of time immediately before 2001.

The paper is based on a review of the existing literature, as well as on material taken from Western and Chinese media, to represent the broad range of opinions expressed by the intellectuals, the power-elite and the party-oriented press.

As it has been pointed out by scholars and journalists, China’s accession to WTO has been identified with "China’s entrance into the world". The world represented by WTO is the world led by Western powers and Western values.

The Western discussion on WTO’s impact on values in China focuses on the belief that growing numbers of Chinese will accept Western values as they become a part of the trading regime that WTO represents. Starting from the analysis of WTO documents and articles appeared in the Western media, the candidate has been isolating concepts referring to modernity in order to delineate a background of the so-called ‘Western values’.

Further development of the research project involves content analysis to be carried out on a selected number of Chinese papers. The analysis will focus on the relationship between modernity and legal enforcement, as a necessary transformation brought about by WTO accession.

The expansion of the Qing empire, notably after the Qianlong conquests, brought into question not only what was now nei and wai in geographical terms, but equally importantly who were the waiyi 外夷 and how they differed from the neiyi 内夷. This paper will explore shifting concepts of nei and wai in the 18th and 19th centuries, with particular reference to the fanbu (番部) of the northern borderlands and the consolidation of the Qing empire. It will examine the use of tribute missions as the instrument by which the court extended its power both outside and inside the empire, and seek to assess the impact of the gradual shift in Qing political thinking from of an open and fluid notion of frontier to a border defined by geography, politics and military logistics.

Professor John Wills (Southern California/Leiden)
Inner/Outer, Ceremony, Frontier: Thinking about the history of Chinese foreign relations

This paper will continue my long struggle with the question of the "tribute system" and other big themes in the history of Chinese foreign relations. It will take special note of the work of two very different approaches by British scholars, those of Laura Newby and of William Callahan. Having long argued against the over-use of the "tribute system" as a master concept, I now find myself studying cases of Qing diplomacy, with Annam/ Vietnam and with Siam/Thailand, that definitely were within the tribute system matrix, and that emerged from late eighteenth century upheavals into remarkably supple and viable connections in the early nineteenth century. A focus on management of ceremonial relations between inner and outer turned out to be extremely useful in managing these transitions. Émigré Chinese advisors to the "outside" rulers provided some key finesse.

Please refer directly to the authors for any further information or full papers.