Asia Institute - Theses
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ItemChina’s intervention policies in the Middle East and North Africa during the late-Obama era( 2020)This thesis considers the role of the United States as a conditioning factor for China’s intervention practices in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), with a particular focus on three cases studies during the late-Obama era: the external interventions in Libya during 2011, the Syrian civil war, and the multilateral involvement in the Iranian nuclear proliferation case. Drawing from the most recent field interviews with stakeholders involved in the three cases and a comprehensive review and content analysis of daily statements and communications between the highest levels of the Chinese government and the Obama administration, this thesis argues that Beijing’s perception of the American-led interventions in MENA during the late-Obama era is a major conditioning variable in its decision to balance against, hedge, or cooperate with the United States. More importantly, this thesis illustrates that in addition to unit-level and localized explanations of Chinese interventions, a structurally and power-oriented analysis enhances existing understanding of how and why China intervenes in MENA and other regions contested by the two major powers.
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ItemFinancial sustainability of the pension system in China: Impact of fragmented administration and population ageing( 2020)With a rapidly ageing population and a highly fragmented pension system divided into over 2,000 pools managed separately by local governments, the financial sustainability of the Chinese pension system is facing serious challenges. This study aims to investigate the impact of fragmentation and population ageing on pension sustainability in China. By examining the history of pension reform and policy evolution in the context of overall development of China, the study conducts an analysis on the consequences of fragmentation based on both evidence obtained from fieldwork and secondary data including policy documents and official statistics. The distortion in incentives for local governments is documented in case studies covering both the coastal and inland regions. These case studies demonstrate how pension sustainability is compromised by various adverse effects produced by fragmentation, such as the moral hazard caused by the disarticulated intergovernmental fiscal responsibility. An overlapping generations (OLG) model is updated with the latest demographic data and used to perform a prospective assessment of the impact of population ageing on pension sustainability in China and to help determine whether adjustment in retirement age can ensure long-term financial sustainability under various demographic scenarios in the rest of the century. Overall, the findings of this research reveal that, compared to the population ageing, the issues stemming from the fragmentation pose a more insidious threat to pension sustainability in China. The retirement age reform alone can only provide a necessary but not sufficient condition for ensuring the system’s long-run financial sustainability, abstracting from the significant negative impact of the fragmentation. Problems of moral hazard such as noncompliance by local governments and challenges of adverse selection resulting from the administrative loopholes in the highly decentralised system, if left unchecked, are classic reasons why insurance policies including pension schemes go bankrupt. Therefore, if China wants to ensure the long-term sustainability of the pension system, it is imperative to take its reform to the next level by defragmenting the system. The possibility of the fertility cliff and the danger of the de facto bankruptcy brought by the population ageing further highlight the urgency to address the fragmentation as the underlying cause of the many defects of the system that are damaging pension sustainability.
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ItemChinese Language Use by School-aged Chinese Australians: From a Dual-track Culturalisation Perspective( 2020)Over the past decades, the topic of Chinese immigrants has attracted wide attention and increasing academic interest, due to the rapid growth of Chinese immigration across the globe. However, many existing viewpoints are mainstream-centric, homogeneous and dated. To overcome the current research problems and elaborate Chinese immigrants’ culturalisation process through one important factor—language use—this research takes school-aged Chinese Australians as a case study, analysing their use of Chinese language from a dual-track culturalisation perspective. The 2016 Australian Census reveals that over 1.2 million people in the country claim their Chinese ancestry (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2018). Among them, people who regard Mandarin and Cantonese as the most preferred language to speak at home are 46% and 22% respectively, which jointly contributes to the prevalence of Chinese language use in the Chinese community in Australia. This drew our attention to why and how school-aged Chinese Australians learn and use Chinese language and how its use influences the construction and reconfiguration of their ethnic and cultural identity. Drawing upon interviews and participant observation, this study addresses the research questions above by presenting the complex decision-making process of Chinese immigrant families and the dynamic relations between the broad cultural environment at macro level, the Chinese community in Australia and Chinese families at micro level, and school-aged Chinese Australians themselves. The findings of this research project contribute to our understanding of international migrant children’s culturalisation process, through their language use and multidimensional identity negotiation, and highlight school-aged Chinese Australians’ agency in the transformation of the immigrant community in Australia via their dual-track language practices. Though research findings in this study are based on the case of Chinese-Australian children and adolescents, many aspects of their experience could be shared by immigrants in other age groups and of other ethnicities, due to the representativeness of Chinese immigrants as one of the largest immigrant groups and Australia as a typical immigrant country.
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ItemOverseas Chinese Communities in Transition: Capable Agency, Translocal Positioning, and Community Re-organisation( 2019)The rapid growth of China-born immigrants around the world has attracted intense attention from researchers, the public, and policymakers. However, much understanding of this population is clouded by speculation and misinformation, thus resulting in heated debates and even social anxieties. This research seeks to inform these debates concerning overseas Chinese communities by presenting an empirical case study conducted in Victoria, Australia. It argues that the significant influx of China-born immigrants since the late 1980s and early 1990s has seen an ongoing community reorganising process. Although this process has been influenced by convoluted forces at macro-, meso-, and micro-levels, the thesis demonstrates that it is more endogenous than exogenous. In other words, the process is fundamentally driven by Chinese immigrants who have strong inclinations and capabilities to self-organise for personal advancement and collective betterment. This research is grounded in offline and online ethnographic fieldwork spanning over three years. It is also informed by Chinese and Australian government reports, Australian national censuses, archival resources generated by the local Chinese community, as well as historical and cross-sectional comparisons. The five discussion chapters of this thesis identify and elaborate on the following key manifestations of the reorganising process respectively: a parallel rise of (1) homeland-engaging (transnational) and (2) hostland-embedding (local) activism, (3) heightened community engagement activism, (4) a feminisation turn, and (5) a redrawn organisational landscape. Addressed in this thesis is an under-researched and under-theorised topic central to the study of Chinese Overseas. This research also problematises state-centric analysis and demonstrates how a community-focused perspective can effectively illustrate and account for the dynamism and mechanism of immigrant community development. The co-evolutionary model developed in this research has proved constructive to unpack these convoluted and dynamic processes. In addition, this perspective also sheds light on the lived experiences of transnational mobility, the promises and pitfalls of accelerated transnational migration, and changes unleashed by accelerating globalisation. In so doing, it offers new avenues to studies on international migration and globalisation.
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ItemTowards strengthened primary care in China: an early evaluative study of the government’s role between 2003 and 2015( 2019)Since the early 2000s, the Chinese government has significantly increased its subsidies for health care and made new promises. Among different reform areas, primary care has been prioritised. This thesis evaluates the Chinese government’s role in strengthening primary care between 2003 and 2015. Two main research questions are addressed: 1. What has the Chinese government done to strengthen primary care? and 2. What were the outcomes of these efforts? In order to answer these research questions, data were drawn from both secondary research and fieldwork conducted in China between October 2016 and March 2017. More specifically, data were collected from the China Health Yearbook and China Health Statistical Yearbook, relevant policy documents and academic publications. During my fieldwork, primary data were obtained from semi-structured interviews and observations. These data were analysed using a framework developed from the existing literature. The strengthening of primary care was considered both as a goal in itself and as a means to improve the Chinese health care system. When considered as a goal in itself, the strength of primary care was broken down into structures and processes, which were then further divided into eight dimensions/features. Under each dimension/feature, the Chinese government’s intentions were described, followed by what the government did and intervention outcomes. The major findings of this study can be summarised as follows. To strengthen primary care, the Chinese government has relied heavily on increasing requirements for public primary care facilities and injecting more subsidies. The government has been successful in increasing the inputs of primary care facilities and meeting its own quantitative targets. Primary care facilities have become more spacious, better equipped and staffed by more people. They have delivered a large quantity of essential public health services free of charge, offered essential medicines at wholesaling prices and provided many medical services at below-cost prices. However, problems also exist. The quantitative targets set by the government are not always well justified. The effectiveness of various government efforts has been compromised by a mismatch between targets and funds, weak monitoring and a poor data foundation, compounded by the fragmented administrative structure. The strengthening of primary care facilities has been further complicated by their competitive relationship with hospitals. In the past 15 years, hospitals expanded rapidly, and the relative market share of primary care facilities dropped. The government has realised that diverting patients from hospitals to primary care facilities requires a more comprehensive approach. More recently, the government has further stepped up its efforts to strengthen primary care. Some promising initiatives have been initiated. However, the problems identified in this study have not yet been fully addressed, and these may continue to pose challenges for the government to achieving its intended goals.
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ItemBeyond the hinterland: exploring the international actorness of China’s Yunnan Province( 2019)This study analyses the international relations of subnational governments, a phenomenon conceptualized as paradiplomacy. The scholarly literature on paradiplomacy tends to focus overly on subnational governments in federal systems, rather than those in unitary and centralized countries whose subnational governments have been increasingly proactive in international relations. China is one of these countries. Among the limited numbers of works on Chinese paradiplomacy, the majority are framed within the central-local interactions on foreign affairs and pay inadequate attention to how these provinces have participated directly in external cooperation, in line with their local interests. This body of works also displays a geographical bias, showing more interest in the prosperous coastal regions of China than its inland and border regions. This study, therefore, seeks to address the question of how Yunnan, a border province in the southwest of China, has become an international actor by exploring its international actorness. The thesis develops an original analytical framework. In contrast with previous analytical paradiplomacy frameworks, it combines the concept of paradiplomacy with the theory of actorness. After reviewing the relevant scholarly works, four dimensions of actorness have been considered: motivation, opportunity, capability, and presence. First, this study argues that, in the face of profound domestic developments and a complex external environment, Yunnan has been motivated to engage in cross-border cooperation and to consolidate its external affairs powers. This is followed by a discussion of how external affairs powers have enabled Yunnan to leverage three broad instruments to incentivise neighbouring countries to cooperate with it: infrastructure development, economic statecraft, and diplomatic efforts. Lastly, it is argued that the increased external powers of Yunnan have propelled its role as an international relations actor towards recognition by both neighbouring countries and the Chinese central government. The primary empirical data informing this study was collected through qualitative 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 neighbouring countries of Yunnan. Relevant information was also collected from official documents, gazettes, almanacs, and media reports. Participant observation was conducted as a complement to interviews and content analyses. Consequently, this thesis contributes to the paradiplomacy literature by providing in-depth insights into the international actorness of an under-researched border Chinese province. It has contributed to the extant paradiplomacy literature by proposing a new analytical framework that provides an opening to explore the international actorness of a subnational government. Among previous works, few analytical frameworks have been able to account fully for the evolution of the paradiplomatic activities of subnational governments, whether in federal or unitary states. Through this analysis, therefore, this study demonstrates that a Chinese case can, for the most part, fit within the broader context of paradiplomacy scholarship based on Western cases.
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ItemPolitical communication spaces in the Chinese context: a case study of the Chinese media’s reporting of Sino-Japanese relations( 2019)This dissertation joins a vibrant conversation in the media and communication scholarship about the media-politics dynamics in contemporary Chinese context. As a part of a more general reconsideration of the current state of China’s public communication, it addresses the questions of how has China’s political communication space been embedded in and evolved with social contexts, and how have diverse media participants interactively engaged in the discussion of foreign affairs of Sino-Japanese relations. This thesis argues that China’s political communication sphere is a ‘vigorous but censored’ space where the globally similar logic of networked connectedness coexists with the influences of the Chinese national contexts, and various media participants subjectively interconnect, interdepend, and inter-contextualize under networked but hierarchical structures. Through contextualizing the research model of the ‘actor, connector and interlocutor’ as well as conducting qualitative and quantitative analysis of media coverage and discussions on Sino-Japanese relations from China’s official media and social networking site, this dissertation suggests that political communication arrangement in the Chinese context as a three-dimension process of information flow in which the Party organ takes the role of monopolistic ‘actors’ through providing original, authoritative news and information, setting key themes for other participants, and delimiting the boundary of communication space; the public serve as inclusive but heterogeneous ‘connectors’ who connect with each other through subjectively engaging in civic discussion and deliberating political viewpoints; and the political, media, cultural and social elites play the role of ‘interlocutors’ through becoming ‘opinion leaders’ which dialogically relates actor to connector dimensions and integrate China’s political communication space by contextualizing, reinterpreting official’s narratives and exerting influence on public opinions. This study rethinks the changing relationships between the party state, various media actors’ representations of political issues, and individuals’ everyday civic discussions and engagements in contemporary China.
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ItemSpatiality, education and subjectivity: prescription, negotiation and the spatial politics of interethnic interactions in a Xinjiangban school( 2018)The aim of this thesis is to examine interethnic politics and the spatial issues associated with these politics that unfold in the daily operations of a Xinjiangban school. The Xinjiangban (Neidi Xinjiang gaozhongban, 内地新疆高中班) is a preferential educational policy inaugurated in 2000 which targets the Xinjiang region. It is aimed at reducing educational inequalities between different ethnic groups by recruiting junior secondary school graduates from different ethnic backgrounds in Xinjiang and providing them with what is considered to be superior schooling in select senior secondary schools in Central and Eastern (coastal) provinces of China. Its practice of relocating students geographically and its adoption of a multi-ethnic recruitment strategy combine to make the Xinjiangban a special educational space in which a wide range of new interethnic interactions can be expected to occur. To achieve the aim of this thesis, one key research question is addressed: how do the spatial politics of interethnic interaction in the Xinjiangban programme play out in the dynamics of prescription and negotiation that structure the daily operations of a local Han Chinese majority school that hosts a Xinjiangban class? This thesis approaches the Xinjiangban policy from the disciplinary perspective of cultural geography. By using the concepts of space of prescription and space of negotiation, this research examines how the prescriptions of the Xinjiangban have been produced and spatialised by the policy implementers in the local school, and how both the implementers and recipients of the policy in the local school have reworked, altered, and thereby negotiated the prescribed educational space. By analysing the dynamics of prescription and negotiation that affect the policy implementers and recipients in the local school, this research investigates the inter-ethnic politics of the Xinjiangban, in which the relationships between and/or among policy implementers and recipients, prescribers and negotiators, and the ethnic majority and minority, are analysed. Drawing on seven months of field work in a Xinjiangban school in Southern China, this research argues that the Xinjiangban experience is neither as successful as the state has suggested nor as conflicted as most of the existing literature has claimed it is. The policy has had some success in promoting mutual understanding between Han and Uyghurs. However, this success coexists with other unexpected forms of ethnic tension, making the Xinjiangban a contested educational space. This research seeks not only to add to the scholarly literature on the Xinjiangban policy by presenting and analysing first-hand empirical evidence of the implementation of the policy in a local school, but also to offer some new perspectives on ethnic issues in Xinjiang and China more broadly, as well as on the geography of education in China and its significance in relation to China’s distinctive social and political system.
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ItemHeterodoxy and contemporary Chinese protestantism: the case of Eastern Lightning( 2010)This dissertation examines new religious movements that are loosely related to Protestantism and have emerged in China in the past thirty years. In particular, it introduces the largest and most notorious of these movements. Eastern Lightning (dongfang shandian) emerged from Henan province in the early 1990s, and teaches that Jesus Christ has returned to earth in the form of a Chinese woman to judge humankind and end the present age. It has predominantly attracted women in poor rural areas of northern China, who have been overlooked amidst the nation's rapid social and economic transformation. This dissertation shows that Eastern Lightning combines elements of both tradition and innovation with respect to doctrine, recruitment techniques and symbols, indicating that Protestantism has become a cultural resource from which Chinese religious movements now draw. The dissertation also investigates the responses of Chinese government organs to Protestant-related new religious movements. The government has banned them and targeted them in its campaign against Falun Gong and "evil cults" (xiejiao). In so doing, it has redeployed familiar ways of labeling heterodoxy, tailoring them to fit the Protestant context. However, its efforts to suppress Eastern Lightning have met with only limited success. They have also led Eastern Lightning to intensify its own rhetoric against the Chinese Communist Party, and to employ radical recruitment practices. Chinese Protestants, too, have engaged in vociferous condemnation of new religious movements and attempted to educate their own members against them. This dissertation explores the ways in which different religious factions defend their own doctrinal correctness and attack that of others. Orthodoxy is central to the identities and discourses of all of these groups. Yet while Protestants are united in their condemnation of new religious movements, nuances in their responses reflect their own varying relationships with the state. Hence, this study uncovers the dynamic, complex and fraught interactions between an array of political and religious actors.
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ItemCommunication, narrative and risk: expatriate treatment narratives in Kunming, China( 2011)While studying Chinese in Kunming, China, in 2009, I noticed that anecdotes about experiences in the local biomedical health care system generated a lot of discussion amongst expatriates, and formed the basis for some kind of solidarity between them. This thesis takes a closer look at what I had observed informally, to see what these stories reflected about expatriate perceptions of the Chinese health care system, and what these stories suggest about the nature of being an expatriate. Three central themes emerged from interviews with expatriates about their experiences of seeking medical treatment in Kunming – communication, narrative and risk. Unmet expectations about doctor-patient communication in the medical setting were often associated with unsatisfactory episodes of treatment, and were major elements in expatriates’ perceptions of their health care experiences. Expatriate encounters with the healthcare system were often the foundation for stories, or ‘narratives’, and this thesis looks at how these narratives are formed, and the role they play in the expatriate community for the storyteller and the listener in creating a sense of shared identity and experience. Finally this thesis examines the concept of risk, and how interviewees determine what is risky in an unfamiliar environment. Often these perceived risks are different to what they would be in the interviewees’ home countries. These three elements – communication, narrative and risk – are all interwoven into the ‘treatment narratives’ the expatriates in this thesis offer.