Showing papers in "European Journal of East Asian Studies in 2014"

Mahathirism and Its Legacy in Malaysia’s Foreign Policy

Abstract: The foreign policy style of Malaysia’s fourth prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad (1981–2003), was controversial in many instances, but the country’s influence and leverage in regional and global affairs had been remarkable for a country of its size. Despite initial outcries within Malaysia’s neighbourhood, Mahathir’s contributions to a wider East Asian regionalism are a lasting legacy. In the decade that has passed since Mahathir stepped down, Malaysia’s international relations have rarely made the global headlines. Does the legacy of Mahathirism live on in Malaysia’s foreign policy, or does the seeming absence of bold and pro-active initiatives indicate a substantive change of style and direction? The prime ministers since 2003, Abdullah Badawi and Najib Razak, have lacked Mahathir’s hegemonic status in policy-making, and this has inevitably led to a de-personalisation and institutionalisation of foreign affairs. At the same time both administrations have continued Mahathir’s practice of keeping foreign affairs out of the public domain as much as possible, in order to reduce the influence of domestic interests and debates on foreign policy matters.

Between Class Struggle and Family Loyalty: The Mobilisation of Businessmen’s Wives and Children during the Five Antis Movement

Abstract: During the political campaigns launched by the Chinese Communist Party in the Maoist period, full mobilisation of the masses became the norm. Yet it was not just the authorities and their myriads of units and personnel who became involved. In order to achieve maximum impact, the CCP targeted and mobilised the families of the actors concerned. This paper examines the strategy and measures implemented by the CCP during the Five Antis Movement to manipulate the wives and children of businessmen and merchants and to use them as leverage in pressing businessmen and merchants to ‘confess’ and reveal their alleged wrongdoings in business deals with the state. Although most chose to resist and to side with their husband or father, political pressure was strong enough to force family members to become the instruments of power within the family. While the actual overall cost is impossible to evaluate, enlisting family members into political struggle left a legacy of distrust and uncertainty, which in turn dealt a serious blow to family ethics.

Socialist Transformation and the Demise of Private Entrepreneurs: Wu Yunchu’s Tragedy

Abstract: This paper examines the fate of Wu Yunchu, a major industrialist in the Republican period, and his Tian-brand companies after 1949. Although the ccp had proclaimed its desire to include the ‘national bourgeoisie’ in the new political system and to support private enterprise, it disavowed itself with the launching of the public–private joint management policy that de facto eliminated the private sector. The paper argues that the partly state-owned and fully private companies followed a different path, but eventually all came under the fold of the socialist state. Conceived in ideological terms and implemented hastily, the so-called ‘socialist transformation’ (shehuizhuyi gaizao) suppressed any hope the Chinese entrepreneurs may have entertained of playing a role in Chinese development and society. At the same time, the ill-conceived policy created numerous hurdles that actually hurt national industrial production.

Youth and the Making of Modern China: A Study of the Communist Youth League’s Organisation and Strategies in Times of Revolution (1920–1937)

Abstract: The beginning of the twentieth century marked in China the emergence of “youth” (qingnian) as a distinct analytical category associated with national modernity. As the term qingnian assumed unprecedented significance, a new generation of educated youth aware of its role as agent of social change also came into being. In fact, the May Fourth movement turned Chinese youth into a social force that could be organized and mobilized for effective action by nascent ideologically committed political parties. The historical analysis of the Socialist/Communist Youth League, the Chinese Communist Party-affiliated youth organization, is rather biased, as official historiography tends to overemphasize its role as well as the symbiotic nature of its relationship with the Party. Moreover, so far Western scholars have carried out little work on the topic. This paper makes use of largely unexploited documentary material to reconstruct the history of the Youth League from its inception to its disbandment on the eve of the Sino-Japanese war, and to show how the League interacted with the party’s development in the early stage of the Communist movement. It argues that, in a political context of contestation over power, it was mainly conceived as a tool for Communist propaganda and mobilization of mass support. Yet, the League’s relationship with the party was not always one of symbiosis and subordination.

Billboard Advertising and Sexualisation in Metro Manila

Abstract: Several billboard ads in Metro Manila have stirred controversy in the past decade for using images suggesting sexual acts or revealing private body parts. Politicians and church leaders have criticised them as being ‘indecent’ or ‘pornographic’. But in spite of this advertising strategy being abandoned, a fresh wave of billboards in Metro Manila has continued to use sexualised images, arguably in innovative ways. A content analysis of some of these billboards suggests that two representational techniques are emergent: purposive and referential. Public criticisms have then been strategically circumvented.The discourses that have surrounded billboard sexualisation in Metro Manila unravel the moral conservatism of religious institutions and the state. The purposive and referential techniques on billboards are an attempt to navigate such conservatism. Two possibilities are discernible. As the attention is on viewers’ imagination, the referential technique affords space for the cultural critique of these norms. In contrast, the purposive technique is limited as it focuses on the product’s benefit to the customer. This has led to the reinforcement of sexual stereotypes concerning masculinity and femininity, for example. The article ends by reflecting on the state of sexualisation in Metro Manila.

The Tragedy of the Southeast Asian Commons: Ritualism in ASEAN’s Response to the South China Sea Maritime Dispute

Abstract: The South China Sea disputes have proven to be the most divisive issue in ASEAN. The collective decision-making of the ten member states towards the issue remains ineffective and this has often been attributed to their disunity. However, disunity in the ASEAN maritime commons is symptomatic of the underlying political culture in Southeast Asia. Using Lucian Pye’s analysis of power as ritual in Southeast Asian political culture, we can surmise that the disjuncture between the hopes for a definitive Code of Conduct and the resulting lack of consensus in the 2012 biannual ASEAN summit chaired by Cambodia concretised ritualism. This paper’s analysis focuses on how intra-ASEAN disagreement in resolving the South China Sea maritime dispute was compounded by Cambodia’s 2012 ASEAN chairmanship. It revealed that power as ritual reduces ASEAN integration into a temple in support of the secularised version of the cosmic order and thus tolerating its lack of pragmatic utility and efficiency.

A Search for Causality: China’s Non-Traditional Security and State Weakness

Abstract: This article examines China’s non-traditional security (NTS) relations with its neighbouring states through the lens of state weakness. Building on existing Chinese language literature on the NTS situation in China, the article demonstrates how weak institutions, political illegitimacy and poor state–society relations in six of China’s periphery states—Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, Myanmar, and Mongolia—negatively impact China’s domestic NTS environment.

‘A Helpless Choice’: Liu Hongsheng’s Zhanghua Company in the Throes of Socialist Transformation

Abstract: By October 1953, when the Central Committee of the CCP formally decided to embark on the transition to socialism, the Chinese government already had overall control of the national economy. The newly announced ‘General line of transition to socialism’ heralded the incorporation of private industry into the national production plan, but it triggered all kinds of struggles in the course of public–private joint management. This paper takes a micro-level approach based on the study of one private company, Liu Hongsheng’s Zhanghua Woollen Textile Company, from the perspective of the private enterprise itself. Despite its lofty ideals of eliminating private ownership, the Communist Party of China had to accommodate its policy to the reality that the recovery of the national economy required the input of the private economic sector. The paper argues that the capitalists supported the CCP’s policy on the surface, but did their best to seek the development of their own enterprises. The CCP made concessions, but the basic thrust of its strategy remained geared towards the demise of private entrepreneurs. Even an influential ‘national capitalist’ like Liu had to hand over his enterprises.

The Socialist Transformation of Funeral Companies in Shanghai (1949–1957)

Abstract: The takeover of the city by the People’s Liberation Army in May 1949 marked the beginning of a process of transformation of all commercial and industrial companies in Shanghai. The funeral business companies represented a small sector, yet one that had great significance in everyday life. The ccp sought to control the private funeral companies almost as soon as it took over the city. The new authorities envisioned a radical transformation of the whole funeral business. While they exhibited remarkable efficiency in conducting the process of progressive elimination of many companies and placing the whole funeral business under strict guidance, the ‘socialist transformation’ resulted in a system riddled with inefficiency, mismanagement and mistrust. The ccp built on the experience it had acquired previously, but with Shanghai it also needed to adapt to the challenge of managing a large and complex metropolis. I argue that the ccp successfully enlisted the trade associations to implement its policy through means of ideological dominance, persuasion techniques, threat and sheer coercion. The short but strong protest of the former managers of companies during the Hundred Flowers Movement made visible the powerful political machine that drove their companies into public–private joint management, then full socialisation.

Accelerated Transition: British Enterprises in Shanghai and the Transition to Socialism

Abstract: When the Chinese Communist Party seized power in 1949 it began a process of transforming China’s economy and society. Despite the Party initially advancing a programme of gradual change under ‘New Democracy’, the early 1950s can best be characterised as a period of accelerated transition. This paper uses the case study of the elimination of British business in Shanghai to show how radicalisation in the political sphere catalysed economic change. Drawing on recently disclosed documents from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Archives and materials from the Shanghai Municipal Archives, the paper demonstrates how policy-making and implementation evolved in practice. The elimination of foreign commercial enterprises was deemed a priority, but because they were closely tied into the Chinese economy the processes involved in their removal presented issues that were too difficult to resolve along simplistic ideological lines. While it may seem contradictory to argue that this period was characterised both by accelerated change and by enduring legacies of the old order, this paper demonstrates that behind a facade of cohesive action lay cadres struggling to manage a complex situation. The ccp’s own weaknesses determined their courses of action and the methods they deployed informed the way revolutionary transformation evolved.

The Great Spoliation: The Socialist Transformation of Industry in 1950s China

Abstract: In 2014, according to Fortune magazine, China was home to 2.4 million millionaires, with a robust growth of 900,000 over the previous year.1 Thirty-five years after Deng Xiaoping launched the train of reforms that radically altered the impotent socialist economic system put in place in the 1950s, China seems to have transformed into a full-bloomed capitalist market economy. Although the actual picture is much more complex that it appears at first glance—the genuine private sector remains small, while the state holds a firm grip through an overwhelming and multi-faceted presence—it is undeniable that the Chinese Communist Party has scrapped the system of planned economy, market mechanisms have become the driving factors of economic growth, and a lot of people have taken to heart Deng’s famous 1985 statement, ‘Let some people get rich first.’ In view of the massive inequality in today’s China—in 2011 the Gini Index for China and the United States was almost the same2—one may wonder not just what remains of the socialist experience in China, but how one can read and assess the ‘first transformation’ of the Chinese economic and social system in the 1950s. This special issue addresses and explores this ‘first transformation’—what the ccp termed the ‘socialist transformation’ (shehuizhuyi gaizao) of the Chinese economy—through a series of case studies in industry and the funeral business. Quite recently, thanks to access to new materials, the study of post1949 China has taken on bright new colours.3 For a long time, research on