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China's New Silk Road Dreams
The contributions compiled in this issue engage in critical evaluation of China's "New Silk Road initiative" ("Belt and Road Initiative" [BRI]) by focusing on the potential long-term political and economic effects and implications for Sino-EUropean and Sino-African relations. The authors take the launching of the BRI (October 2013) as a starting point for a general, theory-guided qualitative re-evaluation of the basic patterns of Chinese foreign relations and global interactions under the fifth generation of Chinese political leaders. In 2013, the Chinese state president, Xi Jinping, framed BRI as a global connectivity network consisting of a multitude of overland passages and maritime transportation corridors. Xi Jinping's report to the 19th Party Congress (2017) set the BRI as an anchor concept of China's fine-tuned foreign strategy in the 21st century.
Chinese Identities on Screen
Since 1978, the changes brought on by China's reforms have had an inevitable and significant impact on the development of literature, the arts, and the whole spectrum of culture. As well, contemporary Chinese films have reflected this transition towards commercialization and internationalization, which has included constant changes in cultural policies and the economic conditions for film production. The articles in this collection argue that contemporary Chinese films display a profound shift in identity construction. They explore Chinese identities related to class, nation, and gender, and they highlight aspects of individual identity. All of these are marked by contradiction, tension, multiple versions, changes over time, and other evidence of contingency and construction. The book draws attention to uncertain and unpredictable qualities of "Chineseness" which are often torn between past and present, but are also increasingly comprised of local, national, and global elements. (Series: Chinese History and Society / Berliner China-Hefte - Vol. 40)
The Globalization of Confucius and Confucianism
The popularity of Confucianism is on the rise, not only in China, but also internationally. Confucian values are praised as the (universal) way, especially in the face of current political, social, and economic crises. The philosopher's legacy has now endured for over 2,500 years, and Confucian ideas have gained recognition as an Eastern alternative to Western concepts. This return to China's very own tradition and values can be seen as symbolizing China's new self-confidence. This volume focuses on the resurgence of Confucianism in order to examine the role played by Confucian ideas in the present and the past, as well as the potential future form of a new Confucian culture. The articles range from the perception of Confucianism in Europe at the time of the Enlightenment to Neo-Confucian debates and approaches. (Series: Chinese History and Society - Berliner China-Hefte - Vol. 41)
Queer Women in Urban China
Lala (lesbian) and gay communities in mainland China have emerged rapidly in the 21st century. Alongside new freedoms and modernizing reforms, and with mainstream media and society increasingly tolerant, lalas still experience immense family and social pressures to a degree that this book argues is deeply gendered. The first anthropological study to examine everyday lala lives, intimacies, and communities in China, the chapters explore changing articulations of sexual subjectivity, gendered T-P (tomboy-wife) roles, family and kinship, same-sex weddings, lala-gay contract marriages, and community activism. Engebretsen analyzes lala strategies of complicit transgressions to balance surface res...
China's South-South Relations
Beijing has formed South-South relations with many developing countries and emerging economies by providing foreign aid, setting up trade agreements, making investments, and employing public diplomacy. China's economic rise and diplomatic initiatives to expand strategic partnerships with countries of the Global South are starting to impact the very structure of international relations. The contributions to this volume provide insights into the rapidly unfolding trans-regional dynamics of China's fast developing formal and informal ties to Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. The book also reveals the inadequacies of the traditional architecture of area studies in taking up the challenge of trans-regional research. (Series: Chinese History and Society / Berliner China-Hefte - Vol. 42)
The Autobiographical Turn in Germanophone Documentary and Experimental Film
The essays in this volume examine the parameters shaping the audiovisual self in the Germanophone cultural context across a variety of practices and aesthetic modes, from contemporary artists including Hito Steyerl, Ming Wong, and kate hers to Rolf Dieter Brinkmann's multimedia experiments of the 1970s, and from Helke Misselwitz's challenges to the documentary tradition in the GDR to Peter Liechti's investigations of Swiss ambivalence toward the nation's iconic landscape. The volume thus takes up a number of historically and geographically specific iterations of autobiographical discourse that in each case remain contingent on the space and time in which they are uttered.
Making Local China
This book presents a case study on the city of Yangzhou in China from 1853 to 1928. During this time, the local society of Yangzhou experienced profound changes towards modernization, when the nation-state of China gradually took shape at the local level. "Yangzhou under the Qing" was transformed into "Yangzhou under modern China". The diverse interactions between the Protestant missions and the multiple actors in the local society kept generating new local context and giving special input to the shaping of modernity in the local society. This study analyses the changing situations of the local society as well as the role of Protestant Church as part of the local social fabric, and tries to achieve a better understanding of how modern China developed out of armed conflicts, power-play, and cooperations among different actors in the local society.
Immigrant Protest
Explores how political activism, art, and popular culture challenge the discrimination and injustice faced by illegal and displaced peoples. The last decade has witnessed a global explosion of immigrant protests, political mobilizations by irregular migrants and pro-migrant activists. This volume considers the implications of these struggles for critical understandings of citizenship and borders. Scholars, visual and performance artists, and activists explore the ways in which political activism, art, and popular culture can work to challenge the multiple forms of discrimination and injustice faced by illegal and displaced peoples. They focus on a wide range of topics, including desire and neo-colonial violence in film, visibility and representation, pedagogical function of protest, and the role of the arts and artists in the explosion of political protests that challenge the precarious nature of migrant life in the Global North. They also examine shifting practices of boundary making and boundary taking, changing meanings and lived experiences of citizenship, arguing for a noborder politics enacted through a noborder scholarship.
China's Interaction with the World
The rapidly changing role of China - once an isolated pariah state, now a G-20 member and an emerging superpower in Asia and beyond - is one of the factors to be considered in any conceptualization of the current state of global affairs. The articles in this issue offer preliminary insights into the expansive topic of China's diversified economic, political and cultural interactions with the world. U.S. policies towards Tibet during the Cold War period are examined as well as current global Chinese business networks, China's foreign policy in the 21st century, and the developing relations between China and the five Central Asian states. Jens Damm is an Associate Professor at Chang Jung University, Tainan. He is currently leading a three-year research project at the Oriental Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences. Mechthild Leutner is Professor emerita of Modern Chinese History and Culture at Freie Universitaet Berlin. Niu Dayong is a Professor of the History Department, Peking University. His research is mainly focused on the interactions between China and foreign powers in recent decades.
Intercultural Dialogue across Borders
This issue of the Berliner Chinahefte/Chinese History and Society deals with cultural exchanges between China and the outside world and with their impact, mostly in terms of questions regarding tradition and modernity. China is understood more as an area composed of certain cultural elements which may include the Chinese (and Taiwanese) diaspora, where a sense of belonging still exists, and which exerts influence on everyday culture and habits.
