Suchergebnisse

Today, with social protests a daily phenomenon in China, the Party-state's survival hinges upon its institutional capacity to prevent, monitor, process information on, and overcome real and potential challenges. Over the past decade, the Communist Party has consistently stressed the critical importance of 'stability preservation' (weiwen) as central to ensuring the longevity of the authoritarian regime. Drawing upon intensive interviews and archival research, this article looks into the stability-preservation system in W County in North China. By exploring the institutional configuration, work mechanisms, daily activities and operational principles of the stability-preservation apparatus in the county, the author seeks to gain insight into the PRC regime's mythical operations of 'system maintenance' and the ways in which the Party-state exerts control over society. (J Contemp China/GIGA)

This article begins with a clarification of the chronology of the 'Great Leap Forward' in Chinese higher education following the 1999 decision to expand. It then provides an in-depth examination of the leapfrogging story by focusing on why universities commonly adopted a development strategy that stressed it was better 'to become larger and more comprehensive'. The author argues that this strategy and its associated 'abnormal' university behavior, particularly in cases where local universities ignored the Ministry of Education directives to slow down enrollment expansion in 2000-2005, were driven by two incentives: (1) to attain a higher bureaucratic rank or status; and (2) to obtain more government funds and more tuition. These two incentives were shaped by the bureaucratic control and management system, and the government funds allocation system respectively. The article concludes with a discussion of the larger implications of this study. (J Contemp China/GIGA)

"In the past, anti-sweatshop campaigns have often focused on the apparel sector. More recently, these campaigns have broadened their spectrum as European NGOs increasingly begin to target technology companies producing smartphones and tablet computers, for example. This process comes with ambivalences, however: In the apparel sector, the importance of the local scale had been often unacknowledged. Within current campaigns targeting the ICT industries we can observe a decoupling of NGO driven activities on the consumer markets in the global north on one hand and labor struggles in the global south on the other. This does not only result in ineffective CSR-strategies, but it can also lead to a double victimization of female assembly line workers. The author discusses these contradictions and its implications for consumer focused tactics and coalitions between NGOs and trade unions. The article is based on the authors' work with an NGO focusing on issues of labor in the ICT industry." (author's abstract)

Anthropological analyses of post conflict narratives reveal how strategic interests mobilize to resolve or perpetuate conflict. Three years after the 2005 Helsinki peace agreement between the Government of Indonesia and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) that ended GAM's thirty-year separatist rebellion, the author led a post conflict programming evaluation. Drawing upon qualitative interviews of rural informants for this study and using an anthropological approach to narrative analysis, this article argues that recovery narratives can be understood in terms of official and counter-official discourses, each utilizing strategic resources to amplify their interpretation of an unfolding peace process. Subaltern narratives heard most clearly are empowered because they adhere to narrative conventions proscribed by the peace agreement and other powerful discourses such as GAM's separatist ideology. Other unrecognized voices are left out; their stories of recovery resist easy interpretation and sidestep clichéd narratives of peace. (Crit Asian Stud/GIGA)

In the late 2000s, the phenomenon of ghost cities emerged in China, including not only boomtowns such as Ordos but also "ordinary" third- and fourth-tier cities such as Changzhou. Based on a conceptual framework of China's land-driven growth machine under entrepreneurial governance, we update the ghost city phenomenon through an in-depth empirical study of a third-tier city, Changzhou. The objective of this paper is to expand our understanding of how excessive accumulation of real estate assets has come to dominate the landscape of this type of city against the background of China's economic slowdown. The author argues that overbuilding is due to the malfunction of the classic urban expansion model under entrepreneurial governance. In the case of Changzhou, the local government continued massive "sales" of residential and commercial land while effective housing demand was declining due to slowdowns in the local manufacturing industry and in population growth. In response to the "New Normal" advocated by the central government, the government of Changzhou redirected its land and housing policy. Nevertheless, more profound reforms are needed to change the paradigm of growth-oriented urbanism. (China Perspect/GIGA)

This article discusses the interrelations between different episodes of contention in China through a case study of the Maoming anti-PX protests in 2014. Drawing on interviews and documentary data, the author specifies the spillover effect of previous anti-PX activism on the Maoming case. This article argues that preceding anti-PX protests helped bring about the Maoming protests, and explains how diffusion shaped protest dynamics in two aspects. First, it shows how local officials reacted to previous anti-PX episodes by taking pre-emptive measures designed to prevent mobilization in Maoming. However, this strategy backfired. Instead, it directly contributed to the anti-PX protests by facilitating cognitive liberation and activist networking. Second, this article shows how Maoming contenders also underwent a learning process. Previous anti-PX protests exerted an influence on the grievance framing in the Maoming protests and encouraged mobilization by increasing public expectations for success and legitimizing protest as a tactic. During the course of contention, Maoming protesters actively drew on their predecessors' experiences, which shaped their own strategies accordingly. (J Contemp China/GIGA)

Xi Jinping swiftly centralized political power shortly after the 18th Chinese Communist Party (CCP) National Congress in 2012, opposing what was predicted when he was elected general secretary. This action also compromises China's long-term efforts to avert an over-concentration of power among a few elites. This study deals with Xi's strong ascent to power, defined as the result of institutional change in China's political power game from the perspective of new institutionalism. The author identifies triggers of institutional change, ideas and norms introduced for changing informal institutions, and the actual transformation of formal institutions, arguing that Xi took advantage of social demand for reform coordination as well as some top elites' serious political misbehavior to commence institutional change for the centralization of political power. To do so, Xi introduced new reform ideas - systemic thinking and top-down design, originating from complex systems theory - in the name of coordinating and comprehensively deepening reform. Xi eventually succeeded in justifying the centralization of power and the establishment of central organizations to deepen reforms comprehensively and coordinate internal and external security. As a result, Xi seized power while practically nullifying the principle of division of work. (J Contemp China/GIGA)

In a contribution to the political analysis of contemporary Vietnam - a single-party state often wrongly assumed to be an author of reform and deploying considerable and varied powers - this paper seeks to provide an understanding of the Vietnamese term 'authority' (uy) and its relationship to power. Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan serves as a reference to the notion of authority in Vietnam and is compared to data: what the Vietnamese thought their word best translated as authority meant. The paper concludes that in the 'two-way street' of social contracts, the ruling Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP) actually has little authority. This helps to explain the chronic problems the VCP has faced in securing state capacity and generalised ability to implement policy. It high-lights gaps between the current anachronistic use of Soviet-style power in Vietnam and what could be done if the regime deployed new powers based on authority. The authors conclude that, given the identified lack of authority, the VCP is no real Leviathan. Although more research is needed, this conclusion implies that proactive political tactics in Vietnam may move towards a search for acquiring authority in a 'two-way street' relationship within the Vietnamese political community. Enhanced state capacity and Party authority could follow. (JCSA/GIGA)