Asia Institute - Research Publications
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ItemSocietal dynamics in China's recent past: a scoping review of the research literature(ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD, 2022-06-17)In the past four or so decades, a significant amount of research efforts has been made to analyse the constant and rapid social change taking place in China and the driving dynamics behind the process, resulting in a rich literature on a wide range of issues and aspects related to China’s recent transformations. However, most of such literature is closely related to the research attentions to either political or policy changes and processes or spontaneous and impermanent societal reactions, if not protests and resistances, to changing socio-economic and -political conditions. What has not been sufficiently analysed is how the majority of the population has reacted to the many changes in society over a longer period of time, the inadequacy of which has restricted our understanding of Chinese society, its dynamics and its changing trend to the standpoints of elitists and their opponents. This analytical article seeks to review the existing literature on China’s recent social change and its dynamics, with a focus on the main analytical problems in the literature. To deal with the latter problems, this review is to suggest looking at social changes and dynamics from a stance of competitive social repositionings among the population.
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ItemRiding on the waves of transformation in the Asia-Pacific: Chinese migration to Australia since the late 1980s(Taylor and Francis, 2021-10-25)Australia’s ethnic Chinese population has increased from around 200,000 in the mid-1980s to about 1.2 million according to Australia’s 2016 census. Their settlement has contributed to the fact that China has become Australia’s largest trading partner and that Australia has been recession-free for almost 30 years. At the same time, this rapidly growing population has also become hyperdiverse, well-educated, hyperconnective, highly transnational, and hypermobile. However, over the past three or so years, Australia has been embroiled in a campaign against alleged Chinese influence in Australian politics and public life, and the Chinese-invasion narrative has not only been reinvented, but also been sanctioned by some political leaders and xenophobic critics. Before waiting until the history of Chinese migration to Australia is reconstructed and rewritten, there is an urgent need to look at what has caused new waves of Chinese migration to Australia, and offer an update about it at the intersection of two major socio-economic transformations taking place in the Asia-Pacific, which are China’s reform and opening-up and Australia’s shift towards Asia. Through examining their interplays, this article is to address misconceptions in Australia’s current debate over Chinese influence.
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ItemA new attempt to broaden the study of overseas Chinese(China Academic Journal Publishing House, 2021)A new attempt to broaden the study of overseas Chinese
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ItemNo Preview AvailableAustralia needs to embrace ‘Asianness’ as part of ‘Australianness’ to end racism(Asia Institute, University of Melbourne, 2021-02-23)
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ItemNo Preview AvailableAustralia needs to embrace ‘Asianness’ as part of ‘Australianness’ to end racism(Asia Institute, University of Melbourne, 2020)Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, there’s been a great deal of evidence showing a surge of Sinophobia and anti-Asian racism in Australia. This wave of racism is concerning and alarming but not surprising or novel, given the discrimination faced by Chinese immigrants during the Gold Rush in the mid and late-19th century, Asian immigrants in the early and mid-20th century, and Muslim immigrants in the post 9/11 era, among others. The recurrence of anti-immigrant racism in Australia suggests that its root cause remains, and more systematic diagnosis is needed.
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ItemSick Returnees among China’s Sent-Down Youth and Contemporary Chinese Practices of Identity Performance(Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2021-01-14)China’s first cohort of the sent-down youth during the Cultural Revolution has since its early years attracted considerable research interest and been analysed from a few different viewpoints. However, the gradual retreat from executing the sent-down policy, especially bingtui (return to urban centres of origin because of medical reasons) as the then widely used tactic, and its long-term impact on people’s socio-political attitudes and behaviours have not been examined and evaluated adequately. This has resulted in a large discrepancy between the non-academic discourse of returning sent-down youth, including bingtui, and the academic literature on these aspects in both Chinese and English. As revealed by many non-academic publications, bingtui not only represented the emergence of a widespread popular resistance to the Maoist Cultural Revolution that involved mobilising those who were then sent to the countryside, but was also believed to be responsible for a surge in what has since become known as songli feng (a wave of gift-giving practice). Based on the information recorded in published personal memories of many sent-down youth and other published accounts, online and print, as well as the information collected from my own past observations and recent interviews, this article will go beyond both glowing and condemnatory documentations of the sent-down movement of the late 1960s and 1970s and seek to analyse how bingtui was started, how it was utilised by sent-down youth and their families and, importantly, how it had led more Chinese people to realise that certain aspects of their identity could be performed.