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China's approach toward the territorial disputes in the South China Sea exhibits a pattern similar to the one adopted in earlier territorial disputes settled in the 1960s and China's behavior in its unsettled dispute with Japan over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands. In these previous disputes, even though China asserted large "historical" claims, eventually Beijing concluded settlements based on realistic historical, geographic and security considerations. One conclusion that is drawn is that although Beijing may initially assert irredentist claims, it is more interested in stable and legitimate boundaries than maintaining these historical claims. Adopting a comparative cases approach, this article concludes that if China follows the pattern that was established in earlier disputes in settling the South China Sea disputes, eventually Beijing will seek compromise settlements in order to realize more important national security interests. Using the Sino-Japanese case as a model, it is concluded that compromise settlements in the South China Sea based on principles of equity and modern international legal principles are likely, and China will not insist on recognition of its "historical" claim to all the islands of the South China Sea.
Nancy Park locates the place of corruption in eighteenth-century Qing China by discussing its legal definition as well as its treatment in official and popular writings. By viewing corruption from these three perspectives-the perception shaped by formal, written law; by official handbooks and other related materials; and by popular consciousness as reflected in nonelite discourse-she finds that its definition varied considerably depending on "time, place, context, and speaker." Furthermore, in a society where gift giving constituted a widespread practice and possessed significant social ramifications, notions of corruption and bribery were necessarily "fluid." This fluidity, which was further conditioned by changing political "standards of custom, ethics, and pragmatism," meant that corruption was an integral part of the eighteenth-century Chinese state and society.
If we were asked to recall a coastal city of early modern China, most of us would choose Shanghai, Canton, Xiamen, or Macau. These port cities became famous for facilitating trans-regional sea trade that linked the Qing Empire to the rest of the world. Attentive observers know that all of these cities are located on the Southeast China coast, by which we mean the coastal areas south of Shanghai. Taking Shanghai as the dividing line between the northeastern and southeastern coastlines, the port cities of the south are far more likely to be familiar to us than are those of the north. I consider this phenomenon (i.e. the focus on the coast of early modern China) to be a “Southeast China centrism.” And although we might all concede that some southeastern seaports were vital to transoceanic interactions, it is shortsighted to ignore the northern port cities and the role they played in connecting China with the maritime world. In this article I investigate the importance of Northeast China's port cities by focusing particular attention on the less familiar coastal seaport of Dengzhou. By detailing and examining the political and economic importance of this port city in the early modern period, I will show that Qing China's northeastern coast was no less important than the southeast. Even if China's northern port cities might not have been as economically vibrant as those in the south, we should not overlook their functions and histories. Indeed, they also attained unique patterns of political and economic development throughout the long eighteenth century.
This article surveys a Chinese coastal map (haitu), similar to the sea charts used in the west. The map was produced in the late eighteenth century under the official supervision of the Qing court. Titled Qisheng yanhai tu (A coastal map of the seven provinces), this was one of very few maps made before the First Opium War that charted the contours of coastal regions and the immediate sea space under the control of the Qing Empire. It is also notable for the detailed paratextual information printed on the map touching upon various issues, such as the importance of coastal defense, the significance of the Bohai Sea, the dividing logic between inner and outer sea spaces, as well as the topographies of strategic islands off the China coast. In line with cartographic depictions, these paratextual materials indicate the way that the Manchu Empire conceptualized the maritime frontier in a deliberate and preventive manner. Through careful analysis of this coastal map, we can reexamine the overriding, conventional conception of the Qing Empire as strictly a land-based, continental power that cared little about the ocean before the arrival of western gunboats in the mid-nineteenth century
Since the mid-nineteenth century, historians have taken national states as the principal focus of their scholarship. Since the mid-twentieth century, they have increasingly recognized the importance of large-scale historical processes that transcend the boundaries of national states, and they have identified large-scale zones of interaction that help to bring these processes into clear focus. Sea and ocean basins show considerable promise as frameworks for the analysis of some historical processes. They would not serve well as the absolute or definitive categories of historical analysis because their contours and characteristics have changed dramatically over time with shifting relationships between bodies of water and masses of land. But they are especially useful for bringing focus to processes of commercial, biological, and cultural exchange, which have profoundly influenced the development of both individual societies and the world as a whole.
This article focuses on recent revisionist scholarship demonstrating that China's maritime history in the period 1500 to 1630 is no longer a case of ‘missed opportunity’, a viewpoint fostered by earlier writing dominated by state-centric and land-focused models. To challenge this perspective, this study first reviews analyses demonstrating the far-reaching commercial networks between Ming China and localities in Southeast and Northeast Asia, and then considers the impact of the metaphor of Fernand Braudel's ‘Asian Mediterranean’ and his ideas about ‘world economy’ on the study of East Asian seafaring history. Secondly, this investigation reveals the dimensions of Chinese trade networks which the mid-Ming government officially sanctioned, as well as the extent to which literati from the southern provinces challenged the state's involvement in overseas commerce of trade and exchange. Finally, the article assesses how modern historians have studied late Ming maritime defense policies as security along the littoral lapsed.
The end of the Cold War and doubts about the longevity of the US security commitment in East Asia have raised the potential for both new conflict and new cooperation in the region. Given the salience of maritime issues in relations among the states of the region, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea,finalized in 1982 and in force since 1994 is of considerable potential significance in fostering an orderly approach to areas of tension and avoiding open conflict, especially since China ratified the Convention in July 1996. However, as the United States and Russia remain among the non-ratifiers, many uncertainties remain as to its effect and utility in the East Asian arena. This article examines the current state of relations among the main national players in the region and the disputes outstanding among them, and assesses the potential for both conflict and cooperation.
In examining the scope and limitations of Chinese maritime activities up to the early Ming, this paper reveals that little disparity existed between China and its European counterpart on the basis of ship design, ship-building capacity, nautical skills, geographical horizons in the oceanic world and actual knowledge of Africa and beyond. Hindrances to achievements comparable to the great European discoveries of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are to be found in the traditional concepts and emphases in Chinese geography as well as institutional weaknesses inherent in the Ming State.
Peter the Great founded the city of St. Petersburg early in the eighteenth centry during a war with Sweden for the supremacy of the Baltic Sea. Peter established the admiralty shipyard, the Arsenal, and other armaments factories in or near the new capital to supply the armed forces. Other enterprises produced gunpwoder, sails, rope, cloth for uniforms, and leather for equipment. Obtaining supplies of iron and copper ores proved difficult. The metallurgical factories in the Lake Onega region exhausted the local ore supplies, and the government increasingly relied on supplies of metals from the distant Urals. The problem of accessibility to raw materials continues to plague Russian industry to the present.
The eighteenth-century Chinese taste for European things was met less by importing foreign goods than by domestically producing occidentalizing works of art, a diverse category of objects that can be termed “occidenterie.” This essay redirects the previous consideration of occidenterie from the Jesuit mission and imperial court painting toward a diversity of examples that span geography, material, format, and social class. The various ways in which Chinese occidenterie produced in different places and for different audiences employed elements connoting the West, thereby acquiring their foreign or exoticizing auras, more accurately reflects the empire-wide complexity of this phenomenon.
Carolin Liss is a Postgraduate Research Student in the School of Asian Studies, Murdoch University, Australia.
1. In the Chinese legal system, 'piracy' is not defined as such, but certain crimes, especially those that endanger public security, are related to piracy, and acts of piracy can be punished under those laws. See Zou Keyuan, "Piracy at Sea and China's Response", EAI Background Brief no. 55 (Singapore: East Asian Institute, 2000).
2. Information on the Cheung Son hijacking is based on a number of newspaper articles, particularly articles from the South China Morning Post and the Straits Times.
3. The article is based on material widely available. Primary research on the subject of contemporary piracy has thus far been rather limited and more in-depth research is required to fully understand modern day piracy in all its manifest forms and complexity.
4. James Francis Warren, "A Tale of Two Centuries: The Globalisation of Maritime Raiding and Piracy in Southeast Asia at the End of the Eighteenth and Twentieth Centuries", Paper presented at KITLV Jubilee Workshop, Leiden, 14-16 June 2001, pp. 13-17.
5. There are a number of other organizations and institutions concerned with piracy, such as the International Maritime Organization (IMO), which cannot be discussed in this article.
6. Zou Keyuan, "Enforcing the Law of Piracy in the South China Sea", EAI Background Brief no. 19 (Singapore: East Asian Institute, 1998), p. 13.
7. ICC International Maritime Bureau, "Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships. A Special Report. Revised edition — March 1998" (Barking, U.K.: International Chamber of Commerce IMB, 1998), p. 2.
8. ICC International Maritime Bureau, "Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships. Report for the Period 1 January-30 September 2002" (Barking, U.K.: International Chamber of Commerce IMB, 2002), p. 5.
9. Author's interview with Noel Choong on 23 October 2002.
10. "Piracy in Southeast Asia", CSS Strategic Briefing Papers vol. 3, part 2, Centre for Strategic Studies, June 2000.
11. Peter Chalk, Non-Military Security and Global Order (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000), pp. 68-71.
12. See James Francis Warren, The Sulu Zone 1768-1898: The Dynamics of External Trade, Slavery, and Ethnicity in the Transformation of a Southeast Asian Maritime State (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1981). James Francis Warren, Iranun and Balangingi: Globalisation, Maritime Raiding and the Birth of Ethnicity (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 2002). Carl Trocki, Prince of Pirates: The Temenggongs and the Development of Johor and Singapore, 1784-1885 (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1979).
13. Chalk, Non-Military Security, p. 60.
14. Johann Lindquist, "The Anxieties of Mobility. Development, Migration, and Tourism in the Indonesian Borderlands" (Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Social Anthropology, Stockholm University, 2002), pp. 10-13.
15. See Jon Vagg, "Rough Seas? Contemporary Piracy in South East Asia. (Riau Archipelago, Indonesia)", British Journal of Criminology 35, no. 1 (1995): 63-80.
16. Chalk, Non-Military Security, p. 60.
17. The trade in light arms has enormous impact on the countries involved, affecting political stability and the economy. See Peter Chalk, "Light Arms Trading in Southeast Asia", Jane's Intelligence Review, March 2002, pp. 42-45.
18. Giovanni Falcone with Marcelle Padovani, Men of Honour. The Truth about the Mafia (London: Warner Books, 1992), p. 118.
19. This is not necessarily the case in regard to perpetrators involved in major attacks, where a group of people have in some cases been hired to attack a vessel who did not 'work' together or know each other prior to the attack.
20. ICC International Maritime Bureau. "Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships. A Special Report. Revised Edition — March 1998", pp. 3, 7.
21. Reports of lost yacht equipment, hijacked yachts, injury or even death of yacht owners and their crew appear from time to time in newspapers or other reports. A systematic data collection, however, does not exist to my knowledge.
22. It is therefore impossible to determine the exact number of such attacks. However, some idea of the extent of the problem can be gained from various (newspaper) reports. Vietnamese officials, for example, recorded 68 encounters with pirates involving some 120 fishing vessels in the first nine months of 2001. See Tran Dinh Thanh...
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The four generations of the Zheng family — Zheng Zhilong, Zheng Chenggong, Zheng Jing, and Zheng Keshuang — controlled maritime trade in East Asia during the seventeenth century, and opened up the island of Taiwan for Chinese settlement. This paper traces the evolving interpretations of their legacy in the People’s Republic of China from 1949 to the present day. It argues that every new interpretation brings with it fresh disagreements and negotiations among the official government view, older historical narratives based on the Confucian value system, and the regional sentiments of the Zhengs’native southern Fujian, or Minnan.
The main reason for the rapid rise of China as the world's leading power is its non-interventionist foreign policy. Trade links between China and the Gulf will continue to grow rapidly, as China pays for its ever increasing demand for oil with rising exports. In the decade ending in 2009, China's domestic oil consumption almost doubled. This trade reality has forced a seismic shift in China's foreign policy. Although it still officially adheres to its traditional non-interventionist stance, over the past two decades China's outlook has swung from 'responsive diplomacy' to 'proactive diplomacy.' The growing threat of piracy in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean has provided China with the perfect pretext to enact this policy and establish a naval presence in the Arabian Sea and its branches. China may also be keen to extend both its influence and presence in the region while US political capital is at a nadir among Arab regimes.
This study presents an overview of attempts by Chinese literati during the twentieth century to articulate a coherent Chinese mythology, primarily based on ancient texts but eventually to some extent drawing from ethnographic materials and folklore as well, and all much beholden to Western examples such as Greek and Norse mythology. This examination of text-based activities sets the stage for an inquiry into a wave of monument building during the Reform Era, much of which has celebrated China's ancient myth, history, and legend. A recent park in Wuhan dedicated to the legendary sage ruler and conqueror of floods, Yu the Great, serves as a case study of how, over the last three decades, old Chinese myths have been inscribed on the new Chinese landscape, and allows exploration of this phenomenon in relation to deeper issues concerning the role of myth in Chinese society, particularly its unexpected marriage with modernity.
The Imperial Household (sei-wu-fu), in conjunction with its military counterpart, the Banner system, played an important role in the effective rule of the Manchus over the Chinese subjects. The inception of the Imperial Household started in the year 1638. Since then it went through a process of organisational changes which eventually resulted in the triumph of the bond-servant-run Imperial Household over the eunuch-dominated 13 yamen. As it was meant to be the Emperor's personal treasury, its source of incomes ranged from revenues from the imperial domain, contributions from the empire and abroad, surplus quotas of the customs, proceeds from the monopolised trading of ginseng and furs, fines and confiscations. The Imperial Household served as an important vehicle to function with the government department in the spirit of "unison" of "inner" and "outer" governments. Before the mid-19th century it was financially in a viable state. It was from the later years of the 19th century that the Imperial Household became insolvent. The malfunction and deterioration of the Imperial Household in the ending years of the Dynasty formed one of the factors that led to the decline of the Ch'ing rule, an adequate assessment of which should be sought in the socio-political context of the Ch'ing history.
The rigors of the transition from Ming to Qing imposed harrowing moral choices upon Chinese elites during the 1600s. Some chose to collaborate uneasily with their Manchu conquerors. Others remained loyal to the Ming, even after all hope was lost for a restoration in the South. Yet a third group transferred its support from the fallen dynasty to the rising one, becoming so fiercely attached to the new rulers that its members were willing to endure martyrdom rather than turn against the Manchus during the Rebellion of the Three Feudatories. Although such choices were often situational and not always mutually exclusive, they were associated in contemporaries' eyes with distinct aesthetic tastes, specific philosophical positions, and particular political commitments. This essay attempts to identify those distinctions in the biographical trajectories of several eminent seventeenth-century literati, scholar-officials, and military statesmen.
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While there are universalizing trends in global urbanization currently taking place, several Southeast Asian cities will adopt these new frameworks and institutions at least partly within a local model that is already several centuries old. Particular to the region, this model does not parallel South and East Asia's urban evolutions, the two regions traditionally regarded as the well-springs of Southeast Asian culture. Rather, it contradicts it. The cities of this arena have been and will continue to be primarily their own creatures from a variety of vantage points. Yet it is only by first examining the pattern of these cities' evolutions that we can hope to gain any insight into how these urban centers may unfold in the future. It is in the distant and colonial past that we can sift for geographic and demographic clues that auger how the new Asian "super-capitals" sitting astride the equator may evolve in the years to come.
International Security 27.4 (2003) 57-85
Most international relations theory is inductively derived from the European experience of the past four centuries, during which Europe was the locus and generator of war, innovation, and wealth. According to Kenneth Waltz, "The theory of international politics is written in terms of the great powers of an era. It would be...ridiculous to construct a theory of international politics based on Malaysia and Costa Rica....A general theory of international politics is necessarily based on the great powers." If international relations theorists paid attention to other regions of the globe, it was to study subjects considered peripheral such as third world security or the behavior of small states. Accordingly, international relations scholarship has focused on explaining the European experience, including, for example, the causes of World Wars I and II, as well as the Cold War andU.S.-Soviet relations. Although this is still true, other parts of the world have become increasingly significant. Accordingly, knowledge of European relations is no longer sufficient for a well-trained international relations generalist.
During this time Asia itself—sometimes defined as including China, India, Japan, and Russia and comprising perhaps half the world's population—had an occasional impact on the great powers, but it was never a primary focus. In the past two decades, however, Asia has emerged as a region whose economic, military, and diplomatic power has begun to rival and perhaps even exceed that of Europe. Its growing influence gives scholars a wonderful opportunity in the fields of international relations generally and Asian security specifically to produce increasingly rigorous and theoretically sophisticated work. Because Europe was so important for so long a period, in seeking to understand international relations, scholars have often simply deployed concepts, theories, and experiences derived from the European experience to project onto and explain Asia. This approach is problematic at best. Eurocentric ideas have yielded several mistaken conclusions and predictions about conflict and alignment behavior in Asia. For example, since the early 1990s many Western analysts have predicted dire scenarios for Asia, whereas many Asian experts have expressed growing optimism about the region's future. It is an open question whether Asia, with its very different political economy, history, culture, and demographics, will ever function like the European state system. This is not to criticize European-derived theories purely because they are based on the Western experience: The origins of a theory are not necessarily relevant to its applicability. Rather these theories do a poor job as they are applied to Asia; what I seek to show in this article is that more careful attention to their application can strengthen the theories themselves.
In this article I make two claims about the levels of conflict and types of alignment behavior in Asia. First, I argue that the pessimistic predictions of Western scholars after the end of the Cold War that Asia would experience a period of increased arms racing and power politics has largely failed to materialize, a reality that scholars must confront if they are to develop a better understanding of Asian relations. Second, contrary to the expectations of standard formulations of realism, and although U.S. power confounds the issue, Asian states do not appear to be balancing against rising powers such as China. Rather they seem to be bandwagoning.
I make these claims with great care. Asia is empirically rich and, in many ways, different from the West. Thus efforts to explain Asian issues using international relations theories largely derived inductively from the European experience can be problematic. Focusing exclusively on Asia's differences, however, runs the risk of essentializing the region, resulting in the sort of ori- entalist analysis that most scholars have correctly avoided. I am not making a plea for research that includesa touch of realism, a dash of constructivism, and a pinch of liberalism. The same social-scientific standards—falsifiability, generalizability, and clear causal logic—should apply in the study of Asian international relations as has been applied to the study of Europe. To achieve this, scholars must not dismiss evidence that does not fit their theories. Instead they must consider such evidence and sharpen their propositions so that...
Four Books on the Manchus in China and in Greater Asia - Volume 61 Issue 1 - Ann Waltner, Thomas A. Wilson
Reponse de l'A. aux critiques de Philip C.C. Huang a propos de son ouvrage The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy. Il suggere que Huang n'a pas compris sa demarche et son propos. Reprenant les differents points de la critique de Huang, il soutient notamment qu'il n'existe aucun fondement theorique et methodologique a son utilisation du concept d'involution. Il pointe egalement les nombreuses erreurs de Huang dans son utilisation des donnees chiffrees et dans ses estimations, et il critique l'utilisation qu'il fait des sources historiques. Selon l'A., il est important non seulement de relever les erreurs de facon separee, mais de montrer que leur correction globale permet de changer les resultats de Huang et de consolider les siens. Ces resultats non seulement invalident les critiques de Huang, mais ils fournissent de nouvelles mesures sur des caracteristiques importantes de l'economie du Jiangnan, permettant une meilleure comprehension de la periode qing moyenne, au-dela des conclusions enoncees dans The Great Divergence. Finalement, l'A. insiste sur l'importance de reconnaitre la multiplicite des chemins de developpement qui ont marque les processus de modernisation.
Evelyn S. Rawski's presidential address assesses current formulations regarding the significance of the Qing period in Chinese history. Using Ho Ping-ti's state-of-Qing-historiography piece of 1967 (JAS, 26, 2) as a point of departure, she measures the advances made by recent work which has benefited from improved access to new sources in Chinese and in Manchu, branched out into new topics and themes, concentrated on earlier moments of this period, and shifted attention to the peripheries of the Qing Empire. A notable outcome of the new scholarship is the rejection of the sinicization thesis and its Han-centered orientation in favor of an empire-building model that emphasizes the importance of the Chinese Empire's "cultural links with the non-Han Peoples of Inner Asia" and the distinctions between "the administration of the non-Han regions from the administration of the former Ming provinces." What implications the new findings have for ongoing debates about the Chinese nation and Chinese nationalism are also broached her
Global history has debated the emergence of a divergence in economic growth between China and the West during the eighteenth century. The Macartney Embassy, 1792-94, the first British embassy to China, occurring as it did at the end of the eighteenth century, was an event which revealed changing perceptions of China and the Chinese by different British interest groups from government, trade, industry and enlightened opinion. Many histories of the embassy recount failures of diplomacy and cultural misconception, or divergent ideas of science. This article examines attitudes of British industry to the embassy through the part played in its preparations by the Birmingham industrialist, Matthew Boulton, and revealed in correspondence in the Matthew Boulton Papers. The article uncovers debate among different interest groups over the objects and skilled personnel to be taken on the embassy. Were the objects purveyors of trade or tribute, or of 'useful knowledge' and 'industrial enlightenment'?
The Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) is an information consortium of 15 seafaring nations that are committed to interdict dangerous technologies on their land, around their territorial waters and in their airspace. The emphasis is on combating terrorism, but its implications go well beyond that narrower objective. It is argued that the PRC, which to date has remained aloof, would be an important addition to the initiative. Analyzing China's own geo-political ambitions, PSI is judged inimical. However it is argued that the US should do all it can, through diplomacy, to accommodate China's legitimate interests with the future of the PSI primarily in mind.
Travel writing has an ancient past in China. In this article, John E. Wills ranges over the period from 500 BCE to the Manchu era, identifying the continuities and changes over that long era. Chinese travelers and those who generated accounts of journeys ventured forth for a variety of reasons shaped by political, cultural, and economic imperatives. Many Chinese travelers were drawn to Buddhist monasteries; others, including members of ruling groups, went on expeditions to gather geographical knowledge that they could then use in administering the country. By the fourteenth century the Chinese possessed perhaps the largest port in the world and the legacy of travel helped fuel economic long-distance enterprises and extensive trade, especially in Southeast Asia. © 2007 by the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery. All rights reserved.
This essay examines the transformation from undifferentiated frontier to geographic region of that part of northeast Asia controversially referred to as Manchuria. This transition—from space to place, as it were—long has tended to be seen primarily in terms of the extension of colonial interests into China in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. However, as I shall argue, the invention of this place began much earlier, in the seventeenth century, and owed substantially to the efforts of China's Manchu rulers, who claimed it as their homeland, the terre natale of the Qing dynasty (1644–1912). Even as the area was joined to the larger empire, Qing emperors took care to invest what I define as “Greater Mukden” with a unique identity.