An article appeared recently in the South China Morning Post concerning an open letter calling for the dismissal of ‘triumphalist academic’ Hu Angang, a professor at Tsinghua University (Huang 2018). The letter, addressed to Tsinghua President Qiu Yong and signed by a number of university alumni, criticises Hu for ‘pursuing personal glory’ by claiming that […]
In today’s China, rapid development and urbanisation has resulted in widespread environmental pollution and degradation. In many parts of the country contamination has become a mundane but oppressive part of daily existence. In Resigned Activism (MIT Press 2017), Anna Lora-Wainwright examines how Chinese people living with environmental degradation attempt to improve their situations in ways […]
Heads of major international organisations and world-famous actresses are not all that has been disappearing in China in recent months. According to a complaint recently posted online by several scholars, Springer Nature—the world’s largest academic publisher—is guilty of removing ‘politically sensitive’ content published in the Transcultural Research book series from their Chinese website at the […]
Zhao Liang’s 2007 documentary Crime and Punishment details the emergence of a local police state in a small Chinese town on the border with North Korea. The film follows national border officers who have been called in to take over the town’s policing duties, and the ways in which they interact with local people. As the film unfolds, one incident after another, viewers are drawn into a world of policing which is slow, tiresome, petty, and punctuated with violence.
I recognise in thieves, traitors, and murderers, in the ruthless and the cunning, a deep beauty—a sunken beauty. Jean Genet Geng Jun’s films are set in north-eastern China where he grew up. As Geng Jun put it in an interview I conducted with him at a friend’s studio in Songzhuang this past August: When people […]
The Candlelight Movement of 2016 and 2017 that successfully called for president Park Geun-hye to step down is among the largest social movements in South Korean history. This movement attracted millions of participants over a sustained period of time, while maintaining strikingly peaceful demonstrations that ultimately achieved their goal. This essay looks at the role of the Internet and new media in fostering a new generation of activists and laying the foundation for a successful social mobilisation.
Over the past year, the Cambodian government has engaged in a full-frontal assault on freedoms of expression, association, and assembly. The latest development has seen Cambodia effectively becoming a one-party state, after the ruling party swept all 125 seats on offer in the National Assembly at the polls held in July 2018. This essay examines the ways in which both labour politics and China have played a role in these changes.
Back in 2017, the Discovery Channel aired China: Time of Xi, a slick documentary series presenting China as a dynamic nation on the cutting edge under the stewardship of its ‘people-centred’ President, Xi Jinping. While by most accounts the series was simply good programming featuring renowned international personalities, this essays takes a more critical look at the circumstances surrounding the production, arguing that there was more to it than it meets the eye.
Photography has always been a powerful tool to depict the lives of workers in China. Whereas during the Mao period political control over image production in China created a visual hegemony that glorified socialism and class struggle, more recent digital developments have enabled ordinary Chinese citizens and workers to document their lives and circulate these images online.
The increasing popularity of social media usage in the workplace, as well as rapid advancements in workplace surveillance technology, have made it easier for employers in China—as elsewhere—to access a vast quantity of information on employees’ social media networks. Considering that Chinese privacy and personal data protection laws have been relatively weak, there have been a growing number of cases brought before courts in China involving employer access to, and use of, employee social media content. This essay examines a number of these cases.
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