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This book examines the complex situation of ethnic Chinese Indonesians in post-Suharto Indonesia, focusing on Chinese in two of the largest Indonesian cities, Medan and Surabaya. The fall of Suharto in May 1998 led to the opening up of a democratic and liberal space to include a diversity of political actors and ideals in the political process. However, due to the absence of an effective, genuinely reformist party or political coalition, predatory politico-business interests nurtured under the New Order managed to capture the new political and economic regimes. As a result, corruption and internal mismanagement continue to plague the bureaucracy in the country. The indigenous Indonesian population generally still perceives the Chinese minority as an alien minority who are wealthy, selfish, insular and opportunistic; this is partially due to the role some Chinese have played in perpetuating corrupt business practices. As targets of extortion and corruption by bureaucratic officials and youth/crime organisations, the Chinese are neither merely passive bystanders of the democratisation process in Indonesia nor powerless victims of corrupt practices. By focusing on the important interconnected aspects of the role Chinese play in post-Suharto Indonesia, via business, politics and civil society, this book argues, through a combination of Anthony Giddens’s structure-agency theory as well as Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of habitus and field, that although the Chinese are constrained by various conditions, they also have played an active role in shaping these conditions.

How does civility, defined as considerate treat of others, including strangers, and of the public space, develop in a society? This book aims to answer this question by comparing the processes and outcomes to date of efforts to develop civility in China and Taiwan, two societies that. It first examines the origins and development of civility in Europe questions and whether there was a comparable concept in dynastic China. It follows with arguments for the comparability of China and Taiwan on the basis of their shared cultural heritage, including a conceptual basis for and a history of incivility, authoritarian governance for most of the period since the seventeenth century when the Qing first controlled Taiwan, and top-down civilizing campaigns by the governments of each. It then examines the levels of civility first in China then in Taiwan and examines how Taiwan evolved from an uncivil society composed of myriad small, inward-looking communities, a society in itself, to a very civil society unified by civic nationalism, a society for itself. The concluding chapter examines differences between Taiwan and China that shed light on why the latter has been less successful in developing civility than the former and compares the development of civility with that of democracy, arguing that self-expression values are a prerequisite for both.

What does it mean to be a mainland Chinese man in a transcultural world? What resources do mainland Chinese men utilise to perform a masculinity that is both Chinese and cosmopolitan? This volume demonstrates that the newly emerging formations of mainland Chinese masculinity, whether located in China or overseas, can only be fully understood through attending to the transnational dimensions of their construction. This volume maps multiple instantiations of the 'transnational turn' in Chinese masculinities, including portrayals of the transnational business masculinity of globe-trotting Chinese businessmen in Chinese and German TV dramas, transcultural models of caring fatherhood in Chinese reality TV shows, the transnational journeys of young Chinese entrepreneurs in search of a sense of cultural identity in Chinese blockbuster movies, filmic portrayals of Chinese gay identities ‘haunted’ by premodern masculine models, the integration of sexually liberated Western masculinities and historical caizi images in contemporary fiction, the culinary masculinity of cosmopolitan Chinese TV chefs, the representation of Chinese masculinities in Japan and in online Chinese-language forums in the US, the effect of migration to Africa on Chinese fathering subjectivities, and Chinese fathers' involvement in the growing transnational phenomenon of 'birth tourism' in California.

The “ASEAN Way” is based on the principle of consensus; any individual member state effectively has a veto over any proposal it does not support. This book analyzes how China uses its financial power and influence to divide the member countries of ASEAN in order to prevent them from acting collectively to resolve their territorial disputes with China in the South China Sea. Comparative case studies of China’s relations with Cambodia, the Philippines, and Myanmar illustrate that the regime type in the country with which China is interacting plays an important role in enhancing or constraining China’s ability to influence the governments of developing states within ASEAN and globally. Authoritarian institutions facilitate Chinese influence while democratic institutions inhibit that influence. The book argues that as long as ASEAN includes developing, authoritarian regimes, and given that the United States and other global powers are unlikely to risk any serious conflict over each push of China’s maritime boundaries, little by little, China will assert its sovereignty over the South China Sea. Nevertheless, the book contends that if China chooses to engage in more sophisticated bilateral politics with democratic states, such as providing incentives to a broader range of interest groups, then China will have more success in projecting its power globally.

This volume expands on the long-standing debates about whether Christianity is a collaborator in, or a liberating force against the oppressive patriarchal culture for women in Asia through the accounts of the Anglican church in China. Women have played an important role in the history of Chinese Christianity, but their contributions have yet to receive due recognition, partly because of the complexities arising out of the historical tension between Western imperialism and Chinese patriarchy. Single women missionaries and missionary spouses in the nineteenth century set the early examples of what women could do to spread the Gospel. The education provided to Chinese women by missionaries, which was expected to turn them into good wives and mothers, empowered the students and allowed them to become full participants not only in the Church but also in the wider society. Together, the Western female missionaries and the Chinese women whom they trained explored their newfound freedom and tried out their roles with the help of each other. These developments culminated in the ordination of Florence Li Tim Oi to priesthood in 1944, a singular event that fundamentally changed the history of the Anglican Communion. At the heart of this collection lies the rich experience of those women in the Anglican church, both Chinese and Western, who devoted their lives to their evangelizing and civilizing mission across mainland China and Hong Kong. Contributors make the most of the sources to reconstruct their voices and present sympathetic accounts of these remarkable women’s achievements.

The Japanese passion for the game of baseball stretches back over one hundred years, and has its origins in the Meiji period. Baseball has long been Japan’s national pastime, and the game constitutes an important part of the social fabric of Japan. Moreover, baseball occupies a prominent position in modern Japanese culture. Starting with Masaoka Shiki’s poetry and fiction about baseball in the Meiji era and continuing all the way up to the recent baseball manga of Adachi Mitsuru, this work chronicles cultural representations of baseball in Japan with chapters devoted to poetry, fiction, manga and films that incorporate or represent baseball. The book makes the case that in Japan baseball has been used by writers, filmmakers and artists both to validate the time-honored model of Bushidō-inspired “Samurai baseball” and to challenge rigid cultural values and assumptions. Baseball has served in the modern era as a cultural touchstone to which artists have returned again and again.

Until now, the role of private traders in the Canton Trade has been largely overlooked. History books of the twentieth century say little about them, mostly because their narrative has often been drowned out by the business activities and complaints of the large companies, by discussions of opium smuggling, and by the many reasons for the Opium Wars. While it is true that the operations of private traders were very small compared to those of the European East India companies, which purchased enormous volumes of goods annually in China, all traders, regardless of the size or volume of their trade, were welcomed at Canton. As time progressed, all of the East India companies, whether French, English, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Ostend, Imperial, or Prussian, as well as the Hong merchants, became increasingly more dependent on investments from private traders to finance their operations in China. We now know that the private traders were central to both the success of the companies and to the Canton trade in general.

Depictions within a movie of either filmmaking or film watching are hardly novel, but the dramatic expansion of the reach of the metacinematic into contemporary Chinese cinemas is nothing short of remarkable. The prevalence of metacinematic features forms the basis of a discourse on film arising from the films themselves. Such a discourse, in turn, outlines the boundaries of the possible for film in China as aesthetic or sociopolitical practice. Metacinema also draws our attention to the presence of the audience, people actively responding to a film. In elucidating the affective responses elicited by the metacinematic mode in the viewers, Stuckey argues that metacinema reflects ways of being in the world that audiences may take up for themselves. The films studied in this book are drawn across the full spectrum of Chinese films made in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan during the 1990s and 2000s, from award-winning conceptual art films to popular crowd pleasers, blockbusters to low budget productions, and documentary-style social realist exposé projects to studio assembly line investments. The recurrence of the metacinematic across this broad range of works is indicative of its relevance to Chinese films today, and the analysis of these diverse examples allows us to gauge the cultural, social, and aesthetic implications of Chinese cinemas as a whole.

Returning Home with Glory highlights the importance of return and home in the history of the connections established and maintained between villagers in the Pearl River Delta and various Pacific ports from the time of the Californian and Australian gold rushes to the founding of the People’s Republic of China. Conventional scholarship on Chinese migration tends to privilege nation-state factors or concepts that are dependent on national boundaries. Such approaches are more concerned with the migrants’ settlement in the destination country, downplaying the awkward fact that the majority of the overseas Chinese (huaqiao) originally intended to (and eventually did) return to their home villages (qiaoxiang). By going back to the basics and considering the strong influences exerted by family and home village on those who travelled a better appreciation of how and why communities in southern China developed a unique Pacific linked pattern can be achieved. This work also gives a voice to those who never left their villages (women in particular). Designed as a single case study, this work presents detailed research based on the villages of the Long Du district (near Zhongshan City in Guangdong Province), as well as the three major destinations—Sydney, San Francisco, and Honolulu— of the huaqiao who came from this region. Out of this analysis of what truly mattered to the villagers, the choices they had and made, and what constituted success and failure in their lives, a sympathetic portrayal of the huaqiao emerges.

This book offers a close examination of the artistry and aesthetics in model jingju. The author contextualizes model jingju by tracing its trajectory of political interaction from the 1930s to the 1970s and in modern jingju’s gradual rise to the pinnacle of socialist culture construction in the PRC. This study features detailed analyses of the five major artistic components of model jingju’s final productions—playwriting, acting, music, design, and directing, paying close attention to how each is associated with traditional practices while also contributing to innovative experiments. The author adopts a new approach to theatrical aesthetics—how the major artistic aspects interact with each other, arguing that the consistency and discrepancy in model jingju’s style often have deep roots in its conformity to and deviation from the aesthetic principles of jingju, and that the overarching creative directive, the Combination of Revolutionary Realism and Revolutionary Romanticism, is a flawed premise for model jingju. This study features practitioners’ first-person accounts of their creative process, which contributes to new understandings of the lived experience of producing model jingju that, while a harrowing journey of coping with political interference, was also filled with inspiration and excitement.