Nanlai Cao | City University of Hong Kong (original) (raw)
Papers by Nanlai Cao
Conference Paper: China's Private Commercial Engagement in Africa: The Wenzhou TradeDiaspora... more Conference Paper: China's Private Commercial Engagement in Africa: The Wenzhou TradeDiaspora in Nigeria. ... Title, China's Private Commercial Engagement in Africa: The Wenzhou Trade Diaspora in Nigeria. Authors, Cao, N. Issue Date, 2011. ...
Session 1: Religion on the move: Religion in the context of global migration - Part 1: Cases
主题: 灵性资本与社会公益Theme: Spiritual Capital and Public Goods香港大学曹南来发表了《从企业家作慈善到宗教公益：一个个案的探讨》一文，对“作慈善”与“... more 主题: 灵性资本与社会公益Theme: Spiritual Capital and Public Goods香港大学曹南来发表了《从企业家作慈善到宗教公益：一个个案的探讨》一文，对“作慈善”与“宗教公益”作了一个区分。他探讨温州“老板基督徒”所推动的民间基督教慈善事业，以及他们在把企业家慈善转型到宗教公益的过程中所遇到的文化阻力、制度困境等问题。他认为，从某种程度上说，老板基督徒发起并领导下的民间基督教慈善事业的发展，本质上并不一定是一种以宗教信念为出发点的“宗教公益”行为，更多的是商业和慈善的结合。(摘自: http://www.zjshkx.com/Article/1/201109/20110905332.shtml「宗教社会科学」--“灵性资本与社会公益”- 第8届宗教社会科学年会综述)The 8th Annual Conference of the Social Scientific Study of Religion in China, Fuzhou University, Fujian, China, 1-2 July 2011
Theme: The Present and Future of Religion in ChinaThe 7th Annual Conference on the Social Scienti... more Theme: The Present and Future of Religion in ChinaThe 7th Annual Conference on the Social Scientific Study of Religion in China, Beijing, China, 26-27 July 2010
The China Quarterly, 2011
who seriously doubt the possibility of using Cantonese to inherent common law. A much more visibl... more who seriously doubt the possibility of using Cantonese to inherent common law. A much more visible change is the form and manner of law. With Cantonese comes chaos in courtrooms in many aspects. There are “visceral encounters,” “disorderly shouts” and “volcanic emotions” that are displayed throughout a trial when Cantonese is used. In particular, the traditional deference to the judges is disappearing when litigants started to challenge lawyers and their judges in defiance. Replacing it is the “performance of culturally recognizable speech acts” through which “litigants at times disrupt and undermine the efficacy of judicial formalism (p. 172). In sum, as Ng puts it, “the new voice of Cantonese embodies the beliefs and prejudices of the local society” (p. 25). Ng is careful not be falling into the trap of linguistic determinism. The rise of Cantonese in trials is more than the use of a new language. It empowers the people who use it; it demystifies the powers which hide behind legal formalism and rituals; and it ends political alienation which prevents meaningful political participation and the growth of civil society. After all, English is a language that the vast majority of the Cantonese-speaking people in Hong Kong are not comfortable with. When using mother tongues, litigants become more resourceful and are able to unleash social feelings instantaneously, and more importantly, the distance created by the use of English and the associated aloofness and authority diminishes drastically. Litigants now can speak the truth, directly, with power and to power. For lawyers, the implications are fundamental: if common law is embedded in the English language, then the use of Cantonese, or any other language for that matter, would have the destructive effect of uprooting law from its social context. Given the inevitable increase in judges and lawyers whose mother tongue is Cantonese, the increase in the use of Cantonese as a legal language is also bound to increase. The manner and style of law as preserved by the old common law as we know it will be gradually replaced by a more localized and vibrant justice in which empowered litigants and their lawyers challenge the law and the political system behind it. All that may not be necessarily a bad thing, given the fact that Hong Kong is searching for a new identity in its new political and economic positioning in China. But the introduction of bilingualism, and a different version of rule of law, as Ng vividly presented in his book, does create tremendous stress and uncertainty in the legal system and the rest of the society in Hong Kong.
This paper examines the rise of a group of affluent urban Christians in the post-Mao market trans... more This paper examines the rise of a group of affluent urban Christians in the post-Mao market transition to shed light on China's church-state relations in the reform era. Based on ethnographic data collected in Wenzhou, the most Christianized Chinese city and a pioneer in developing China's current market economy, this study portrays how local believers, many of whom are private entrepreneurs, engage postsocialist state power. It shows that these Christian entrepreneurs actively seek the state's recognition and renegotiate the boundaries of religion and politics in the context of development. They have adopted their modern capitalist cultural logic in the production, management and consumption of religious activities. Adding to the post-Weberian literature on religion and capitalism, this paper argues that regional capitalist development enabled by post-Mao reforms has largely depoliticized and promoted local practices of faith. Challenging the unidirectional view of China's church-state relations that focuses on state dominance and church resistance, this paper also contributes to a reconceptualization of Chinese Christian studies.
While Christianity is among the fastest growing religions in the reform era, state-led sporadic d... more While Christianity is among the fastest growing religions in the reform era, state-led sporadic demolition campaigns have targeted unauthorized church structures and sites in order to contain massive Christian growth, especially in regions where there is a high concentration of Christian population. Such campaigns oft en stir heated international concerns about China's religious freedom violations, naturally making church-state relations the recurring central theme of both public and academic discourses on the church in China. However, a heightened emphasis on church-state tensions and religious persecution may obscure the cultural and spatial dimensions of local church development. Focusing on the case of the recent campaign against rooft op crosses in Wenzhou-the most Christianized Chinese city, I go beyond the one-dimensional framework of church-state relations by off ering a
china perspectives The paper addresses the changing dynamics of Protestantism in contemporary urb... more china perspectives The paper addresses the changing dynamics of Protestantism in contemporary urban China through the lens of the Christian discourse of quality (suzhi). Linking suzhi with processes of identity and subject formation in the Chinese Protestant community, the paper shows that the religiosity of today's Chinese Protestants is not so much related to acts of spiritual seeking in a state-centred political framework as it is shaped by desires and practices of self-making among neoliberal individuals under rapid marketisation. It also demonstrates that Chinese Protestantism has undergone not just a quantitative increase but also a qualitative change that counters the one-dimensional representation of Christian religiosity in the post-Mao era.
The revival of religious practice in the post-Mao era has become an important topic in Chinese so... more The revival of religious practice in the post-Mao era has become an important topic in Chinese social life, attracting serious attention both domestically and internationally. To explore the contemporary Chinese religious scene, scholarship from within the P. R. China has embraced social science research that distinguishes itself from traditional textually based research on religion. While there was a growing focus on the scientific principles of neutrality and objectivity in Chinese religious research in the 1980s and 1990s, the first decades of the 21st century have seen a dramatic rise in the number of ethnographic and fieldbased studies. They employ participant observation and face-to-face interviews to supply empirical findings about religious communities that are little known or stereotyped by official state discourses and categories. The article shows how such fieldwork-based case studies may help transform religion into a multidimensional empirical concept in the P. R. China. It also highlights their significance for negotiating the institutional identity of Chinese religious research under institutional and ideological restrictions.
Routledge eBooks, Jul 5, 2017
This paper explores the social and economic implications of indigenous Christian discourses and p... more This paper explores the social and economic implications of indigenous Christian discourses and practices in the Wenzhou Chinese diaspora in Paris, France. Popularly known as China's Jerusalem, the coastal Chinese city of Wenzhou is home to thousands of selfstarted home-grown Protestant churches and a million Protestants. Drawing on multisited fieldwork, this study provides an ethnographic account of a group of Wenzhou merchants who have formed large Christian communities at home, along with migrant enclaves in Paris. The study shows how these migrant entrepreneurs and traders have brought their version of Christianity from China to France and how they perceive and deal with issues of illegality, moral contingency, native-place based loyalty and national belonging. It highlights the thoroughly intertwined relationship between an indigenised Chinese Christianity and the petty capitalist legacy of coastal southeast China in a secularised, exclusionary European context, and suggests that Christianity provides a form of non-market morality that serves to effectively legitimate Wenzhou's premodern household economy in the context of market modernity.
Journal of Chinese Overseas, 2013
Chinese Religions Going Global, 2020
Conference Paper: China's Private Commercial Engagement in Africa: The Wenzhou TradeDiaspora... more Conference Paper: China's Private Commercial Engagement in Africa: The Wenzhou TradeDiaspora in Nigeria. ... Title, China's Private Commercial Engagement in Africa: The Wenzhou Trade Diaspora in Nigeria. Authors, Cao, N. Issue Date, 2011. ...
Session 1: Religion on the move: Religion in the context of global migration - Part 1: Cases
主题: 灵性资本与社会公益Theme: Spiritual Capital and Public Goods香港大学曹南来发表了《从企业家作慈善到宗教公益：一个个案的探讨》一文，对“作慈善”与“... more 主题: 灵性资本与社会公益Theme: Spiritual Capital and Public Goods香港大学曹南来发表了《从企业家作慈善到宗教公益：一个个案的探讨》一文，对“作慈善”与“宗教公益”作了一个区分。他探讨温州“老板基督徒”所推动的民间基督教慈善事业，以及他们在把企业家慈善转型到宗教公益的过程中所遇到的文化阻力、制度困境等问题。他认为，从某种程度上说，老板基督徒发起并领导下的民间基督教慈善事业的发展，本质上并不一定是一种以宗教信念为出发点的“宗教公益”行为，更多的是商业和慈善的结合。(摘自: http://www.zjshkx.com/Article/1/201109/20110905332.shtml「宗教社会科学」--“灵性资本与社会公益”- 第8届宗教社会科学年会综述)The 8th Annual Conference of the Social Scientific Study of Religion in China, Fuzhou University, Fujian, China, 1-2 July 2011
Theme: The Present and Future of Religion in ChinaThe 7th Annual Conference on the Social Scienti... more Theme: The Present and Future of Religion in ChinaThe 7th Annual Conference on the Social Scientific Study of Religion in China, Beijing, China, 26-27 July 2010
The China Quarterly, 2011
who seriously doubt the possibility of using Cantonese to inherent common law. A much more visibl... more who seriously doubt the possibility of using Cantonese to inherent common law. A much more visible change is the form and manner of law. With Cantonese comes chaos in courtrooms in many aspects. There are “visceral encounters,” “disorderly shouts” and “volcanic emotions” that are displayed throughout a trial when Cantonese is used. In particular, the traditional deference to the judges is disappearing when litigants started to challenge lawyers and their judges in defiance. Replacing it is the “performance of culturally recognizable speech acts” through which “litigants at times disrupt and undermine the efficacy of judicial formalism (p. 172). In sum, as Ng puts it, “the new voice of Cantonese embodies the beliefs and prejudices of the local society” (p. 25). Ng is careful not be falling into the trap of linguistic determinism. The rise of Cantonese in trials is more than the use of a new language. It empowers the people who use it; it demystifies the powers which hide behind legal formalism and rituals; and it ends political alienation which prevents meaningful political participation and the growth of civil society. After all, English is a language that the vast majority of the Cantonese-speaking people in Hong Kong are not comfortable with. When using mother tongues, litigants become more resourceful and are able to unleash social feelings instantaneously, and more importantly, the distance created by the use of English and the associated aloofness and authority diminishes drastically. Litigants now can speak the truth, directly, with power and to power. For lawyers, the implications are fundamental: if common law is embedded in the English language, then the use of Cantonese, or any other language for that matter, would have the destructive effect of uprooting law from its social context. Given the inevitable increase in judges and lawyers whose mother tongue is Cantonese, the increase in the use of Cantonese as a legal language is also bound to increase. The manner and style of law as preserved by the old common law as we know it will be gradually replaced by a more localized and vibrant justice in which empowered litigants and their lawyers challenge the law and the political system behind it. All that may not be necessarily a bad thing, given the fact that Hong Kong is searching for a new identity in its new political and economic positioning in China. But the introduction of bilingualism, and a different version of rule of law, as Ng vividly presented in his book, does create tremendous stress and uncertainty in the legal system and the rest of the society in Hong Kong.
This paper examines the rise of a group of affluent urban Christians in the post-Mao market trans... more This paper examines the rise of a group of affluent urban Christians in the post-Mao market transition to shed light on China's church-state relations in the reform era. Based on ethnographic data collected in Wenzhou, the most Christianized Chinese city and a pioneer in developing China's current market economy, this study portrays how local believers, many of whom are private entrepreneurs, engage postsocialist state power. It shows that these Christian entrepreneurs actively seek the state's recognition and renegotiate the boundaries of religion and politics in the context of development. They have adopted their modern capitalist cultural logic in the production, management and consumption of religious activities. Adding to the post-Weberian literature on religion and capitalism, this paper argues that regional capitalist development enabled by post-Mao reforms has largely depoliticized and promoted local practices of faith. Challenging the unidirectional view of China's church-state relations that focuses on state dominance and church resistance, this paper also contributes to a reconceptualization of Chinese Christian studies.
While Christianity is among the fastest growing religions in the reform era, state-led sporadic d... more While Christianity is among the fastest growing religions in the reform era, state-led sporadic demolition campaigns have targeted unauthorized church structures and sites in order to contain massive Christian growth, especially in regions where there is a high concentration of Christian population. Such campaigns oft en stir heated international concerns about China's religious freedom violations, naturally making church-state relations the recurring central theme of both public and academic discourses on the church in China. However, a heightened emphasis on church-state tensions and religious persecution may obscure the cultural and spatial dimensions of local church development. Focusing on the case of the recent campaign against rooft op crosses in Wenzhou-the most Christianized Chinese city, I go beyond the one-dimensional framework of church-state relations by off ering a
china perspectives The paper addresses the changing dynamics of Protestantism in contemporary urb... more china perspectives The paper addresses the changing dynamics of Protestantism in contemporary urban China through the lens of the Christian discourse of quality (suzhi). Linking suzhi with processes of identity and subject formation in the Chinese Protestant community, the paper shows that the religiosity of today's Chinese Protestants is not so much related to acts of spiritual seeking in a state-centred political framework as it is shaped by desires and practices of self-making among neoliberal individuals under rapid marketisation. It also demonstrates that Chinese Protestantism has undergone not just a quantitative increase but also a qualitative change that counters the one-dimensional representation of Christian religiosity in the post-Mao era.
The revival of religious practice in the post-Mao era has become an important topic in Chinese so... more The revival of religious practice in the post-Mao era has become an important topic in Chinese social life, attracting serious attention both domestically and internationally. To explore the contemporary Chinese religious scene, scholarship from within the P. R. China has embraced social science research that distinguishes itself from traditional textually based research on religion. While there was a growing focus on the scientific principles of neutrality and objectivity in Chinese religious research in the 1980s and 1990s, the first decades of the 21st century have seen a dramatic rise in the number of ethnographic and fieldbased studies. They employ participant observation and face-to-face interviews to supply empirical findings about religious communities that are little known or stereotyped by official state discourses and categories. The article shows how such fieldwork-based case studies may help transform religion into a multidimensional empirical concept in the P. R. China. It also highlights their significance for negotiating the institutional identity of Chinese religious research under institutional and ideological restrictions.
Routledge eBooks, Jul 5, 2017
This paper explores the social and economic implications of indigenous Christian discourses and p... more This paper explores the social and economic implications of indigenous Christian discourses and practices in the Wenzhou Chinese diaspora in Paris, France. Popularly known as China's Jerusalem, the coastal Chinese city of Wenzhou is home to thousands of selfstarted home-grown Protestant churches and a million Protestants. Drawing on multisited fieldwork, this study provides an ethnographic account of a group of Wenzhou merchants who have formed large Christian communities at home, along with migrant enclaves in Paris. The study shows how these migrant entrepreneurs and traders have brought their version of Christianity from China to France and how they perceive and deal with issues of illegality, moral contingency, native-place based loyalty and national belonging. It highlights the thoroughly intertwined relationship between an indigenised Chinese Christianity and the petty capitalist legacy of coastal southeast China in a secularised, exclusionary European context, and suggests that Christianity provides a form of non-market morality that serves to effectively legitimate Wenzhou's premodern household economy in the context of market modernity.
Journal of Chinese Overseas, 2013
Chinese Religions Going Global, 2020