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"This book explores how Chinese border provinces have become actors in international relations. Through an analysis of the international actorness - the inherent characteristics of a subnational entity as an international player - of Yunnan and two other geographically peripheral provinces, Guangdong and Guangxi, the domestic, economic and legislative circumstances that motivated these provinces to conduct transboundary engagements is determined. The study is based on an extensive field study including interviews with those involved in the implementation of Yunnan's foreign agenda, representatives from province-owned enterprises, universities and think tanks, and officials and experts from the countries neighbouring Yunnan. Acknowledging the role of external geopolitics, the authors analyse the efforts of these border provinces to incentivise neighbouring countries to cooperate with them on areas of trade, investment and non-traditional security. Yao Song and Tianyang Liu also observe how border provinces have leveraged their paradiplomatic strengths to affect China's foreign relations with neighbouring countries. This volume will appeal to researchers, academics and postgraduates in political science, international relations, and diplomacy as well as geography, Southeast Asian politics, political economy, Chinese periphery diplomacy, and non-federal paradiplomacy"--

AbstractThe scholarly literature on paradiplomacy has tended to focus overly on subnational governments in federal systems rather than those in unitary and centralized countries. However, it is important to note that some subnational governments in these countries have been increasingly proactive in international relations (IR). This study explores the paradiplomatic activities of Yunnan, a province in the south of China which, since the early 1990s, has actively engaged in cross-border cooperation. Combining the concept of paradiplomacy with the theory of actorness, this study first argues that Yunnan has been incentivized to conduct paradiplomacy through the decision of Beijing to open China's borders; the inefficiency of the central government in managing border-related issues; and the interprovincial competition over economic and diplomatic clouts in the Mekong subregion. Second, this study argues that Yunnan's new external affairs powers have been consolidated by a host of new opportunities stemming from the external environment. Third, it argues that Yunnan's new external affairs powers have enabled it to leverage two broad instruments (infrastructure development and economic statecraft) to make neighboring countries more dependent on cooperation with it. And finally, it is argued that Yunnan's role as an IR player has been acknowledged both by neighboring countries and by Beijing.

Partisanship has become the dominant ideological incentive to political polarization. Likewise, the analytical association between polarization and the party system in electoral democracies has focused, in most of the existing literature, on political polarization, leaving aside authoritarian or semi-authoritarian contexts where a fair multi-party election is absent or dysfunctional. By collecting and analyzing online posts about international terrorism from Sina Weibo in China, between January 2011 and December 2016, this study proves the existence of opinion polarization on terrorism in China's digital media sphere. By categorizing the findings into two camps, 'global war on terror discourse' and 'antiimperialist narrative', the study elucidates these polarized attitudes in terms of their acceptance, denial and decomposition of the global discourse of fears about terrorism. Drawing on our case study, the study then proposes an alternative explanation for the motivation/driver of mass polarization in digitally networked communication in China, identified as the effect of globalization and localization.

Abstract: This study adopts a gender-sensitive perspective to examine Chinese diplomatic presences and practices in cyberspace. By analysing the gender issues and political communication styles adopted by two Chinese high-profile diplomats, Hua Chunying and Zhao Lijian, this article addresses whether the recent inclusion of women in China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has the potential to challenge the patriarchal structure of diplomacy that usually devalues femininity in diplomatic norms and practices. A content analysis of sampled tweets (N=1,822) reveals that despite adopting a gender-balanced issue focus, Hua Chunying used minimal feminine communication patterns and exhibited masculine traits of assertiveness, self-reliance, and personal and emotional restraint, communicating in a more masculine manner than her male colleague, Zhao Lijian. Drawing from the findings, the authors propose that Chinese diplomats are navigating multiple structural and contextual boundaries, which emerge at the intersection of masculine norms and practices in diplomacy and China's increasingly proactive stance on foreign affairs. They also highlight the complexity of the rhetorical effects of having female diplomats on Chinese diplomacy.

AbstractWith mass polarization becoming an increasingly urgent sociopolitical agenda in both established and emerging democracies, academics and policy‐makers have been racing to develop effective depolarizing approaches. While (semi‐)authoritarian nations have also been afflicted by social cleavage and a negative, incompatible and even radicalized discussion climate towards public policy and sociopolitical issues, polarization and related countermeasures in such contexts have thus far gained scarce academic attention. The present study addresses this gap, investigating the depolarization potential of exposure to civil (vs. uncivil) cross‐cutting discussion in China's cyberspace. Through online experiment (N = 1064), participants were exposed to dissonant viewpoints on China's contentious divorce‐cooling‐off‐period policy, presented as original Weibo posts (China's social network site). Our results prove the effectiveness of civil disagreement, as a virtue and precondition of deliberation, in alleviating opinion extremity. Finally, implications for China's wider political system and deliberation studies are discussed.