Cyber-Nationalism in China: Popular Discourse on China's Belt Road (original) (raw)

China’s “Weaponized” Vaccine: Intertwining Between International and Domestic Politics

East Asia (Piscataway, N.j.), 2022

Ever since China has formally joined the WHO-backed global COVID-19 vaccine initiative known as COVAX, there is a presumed notion that China’s vaccine diplomacy will make a significant contribution to the international public good and thus uplift Beijing’s role as the rule-maker of international order. To scrutinize this, the paper asks if China succeeded in proliferating its weaponized vaccine policy to obtain maximum diplomatic gains and soft power projection to intensify its international image, geopolitical power, and domestic politico legitimacy. The authors argue that despite its vaccine diplomacy demonstrated the robust governance capacity and responsibility to be a great power. Yet, Beijing’s geopolitical influence and international image are significantly overrated and not enough to play a more prominent role in the global power fulcrum/equilibrium. On the contrary, China enjoys a leading position on the domestic political front. Its successful portrayal of China’s vaccine ...

China’s double body: infrastructure routes and the mapping of China’s nation-state and civilization-state

Eurasian Geography and Economics, 2019

In contemporary China, there are two cartographies that underlie geographical imaginations of China’s political, economic, and cultural nature. The first is the geobody, a bordered notion of the state that stresses national territorial integrity and draws attention to historical territorial transgressions. The second is the civilization-state, a cartography that stresses extensive civilizational connection over national borders and which draws from China’s ancient cosmopolitan heritage and projected developmental future. This article analyzes the cartographies and attendant discourses of the geobody and civilization-state as iconic representations that speak to different ontologies of China. Analyzing China’s double body reveals two drastically different expectations about borders and infrastructure connectivity. Today and in the early years of the Chinese nation, maps of China’s internal railway network have supported nationalist calls for territorial security and promoted the idea of the Chinese geobody. Contemporary maps of the civilization-state, however, stress an unbounded China looking to enrich its neighbors through cultural exchange, road and railway expansion, and Belt and Road Initiative infrastructural connection. This article argues that these cartographies are not reducible to one another and that geographers should take seriously the affective work of maps beyond that of the geobody in critical geopolitical analysis.

The #MilkTeaAlliance: A New Transnational Pro-Democracy Movement Against Chinese-Centered Globalization?

Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies, 2021

In April 2020, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, memes addressing the Thai monarchy in a critical way appeared on Twitter under the hashtag #MilkTeaAlliance, which for a couple of days trended worldwide. Initially, the Twitter account of a Thai TV star was attacked by Chinese nationalists. But, different from similar incidents in the past, a new pan-Asian solidarity of Twitter users emerged, fought back the attack, and defeated the Chinese nationalists through highly self-ironic, witty, and political memes. In our article, we will discuss the meme war in its historic, political, and social context. Firstly, we claim that it can count as the inception of a new transnational movement comparable to the globalization-critical movement of the early 2000s, in so far as it targets the present, Chinese-led version of globalization. Secondly, we will challenge the dominant interpretation that the meme war was a confrontation between young Thai, Hong Kong, and Taiwanese pro-democracy act...

INTRODUCTION by Co-editors and Contributors of the Special Section Elena Chebankova and Piotr Dutkiewicz

Полис. Политические исследования

The collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of the twentieth century ended the pre-existing bipolar Cold War system and resulted in a unipolar moment in which the United States enjoyed a position of almost unchallenged global and civilizational leadership [Krauthammer 1991; Waltz 1993; Wohlforth 1999]. However, despite the initial elation of some Western politicians and analysts [Fukuyama 1992; Brooks, Wohlforth 2008; Kagan 2008], who hoped to see the triumph of the Western idea universally, this situation was relatively short-lived. Global dialogue soon moved beyond this moment of unipolarity toward its more conventional form, in which states struggle for power and influence and search for areas of mutually beneficial co-operation. At the beginning of the third decade of the twenty-first century, we see a qualitatively different world. There have been profound political changes since the post-Cold War unipolarity. In this world, the idea of civilization has become a virtual currenc...

A cultura estratégica na Iniciativa Faixa e Rota [The strategic culture on the Belt and Road Initiative]

Daxiyangguo - Portuguese Journal of Asian Studies, 2018

The Belt and Road Initiative, by its ambition and because it is led by China, has provoked very different reactions. The objective of this study is to understand the genesis of this project, by analyzing the Chinese strategic culture, with the theoretical lenses of the Neoclassical Realism. The lack of a study with this approach was identified as a gap in literature. There are two distinct views about the Chinese strategic culture: one that pictures it as peaceful and defensive in nature and one that considers it expansionist and, of course, offensive. There is, however, a third approach, which argues that the Chinese strategic culture manages to reconcile the two previous approaches, in a harmony between opposites traditional of Chinese way of thinking. This article, about China’s foreign economic policy, concludes that the Belt and Road Initiative originates within this dual strategic culture framework and its success depends on China’s ability to balance the inherent contradictory points of this duality.

A Chinese feminist analysis of Chinese social media responses to the Russian invasion of Ukraine

International Feminist Journal of Politics, 2022

On 24th February 2022, Russia launched a three-pronged invasion of its southwest neighbour, Ukraine, from the north, east, and south, marking a devastating escalation of the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian conflict. The invasion immediately captured global media attention. Political scientists, such as Maria Repnikova and Wendy Zhou (2022), quickly noted that the Russian side appears to be enjoying official and popular support from China. However, while the Chinese government communicates in vague and ambiguous ways, Chinese social media is more overtly pro-Russian. As a Chinese feminist researcher who closely follows China’s current political climate, I understand the emotionally charged Chinese nationalist appreciation of Russia’s challenges to the US-led coalition as both an acknowledgement that China’s only major ally is Russia, and that colloquial and provocative posts can be a way to circumvent official censorship and surveillance. But what strikes me the most is the sexist and racialised nature of my fellow country people’s pro-Russian commentaries and even pro-Ukrainian responses, which constantly appear on my personal social media feed.

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