China

New Book: The Chinese Must Go: Violence, Exclusion, and the Making of the Alien in America, by Beth Lew-Williams

The Chinese Must Go: Violence, Exclusion, and the Making of the Alien in America, by Beth Lew-Williams. Harvard University Press 2018. ISBN 9780674976016

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中译本:《无处落脚

The American West erupted in anti-Chinese violence in 1885. Following the massacre of Chinese miners in Wyoming Territory, communities throughout California and the Pacific Northwest harassed, assaulted, and expelled thousands of Chinese immigrants. Beth Lew-Williams shows how American immigration policies incited this violence and how the violence, in turn, provoked new exclusionary policies. Ultimately, Lew-Williams argues, Chinese expulsion and exclusion produced the concept of the “alien” in modern America.

The Chinese Must Go begins in the 1850s, before federal border control established strict divisions between citizens and aliens. Across decades of felling trees and laying tracks in the American West, Chinese workers faced escalating racial conflict and unrest. In response, Congress passed the Chinese Restriction Act of 1882 and made its first attempt to bar immigrants based on race and class. When this unprecedented experiment in federal border control failed to slow Chinese migration, vigilantes attempted to take the matter into their own hands. Fearing the spread of mob violence, U.S. policymakers redoubled their efforts to keep the Chinese out, overhauling U.S. immigration law and transforming diplomatic relations with China.

By locating the origins of the modern American alien in this violent era, Lew-Williams recasts the significance of Chinese exclusion in U.S. history. As The Chinese Must Go makes clear, anti-Chinese law and violence continues to have consequences for today’s immigrants. The present resurgence of xenophobia builds mightily upon past fears of the “heathen Chinaman.”

Beth Lew-Williams is Assistant Professor of History at Princeton University.


“With scrupulous research and conceptual boldness, Lew-Williams applies the nuances of a ‘scalar’ lens to contrast anti-Chinese campaigns at local, regional, and national levels, producing a social history that significantly remakes the well-established chronology of Chinese exclusion by highlighting the role of anti-Chinese violence and vigilantism in advancing immigration controls on the Chinese from goals of restriction to exclusion.”—Madeline Y. Hsu, author of Asian American History: A Very Short Introduction

“The Chinese Must Go presents a powerful argument about racial violence that could not be more timely. It shows why nineteenth-century pogroms against the Chinese in the American West resonate today. White nationalists targeted Chinese immigrants as threats to their homes and jobs and blamed the American government for failing to seal the borders.”—Richard White, author of The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865–1896

“Moving seamlessly from the local to the international, The Chinese Must Go offers a riveting, beautifully written new account of Chinese exclusion, one that foregrounds Chinese voices and experiences. A timely and important contribution to our understanding of immigration and the border.”—Karl Jacoby, Columbia University


Table of Contents

Introduction: The Violence of Exclusion
Part 1: Restriction
1. The Chinese Question
2. Experiments in Restriction
Part 2: Violence
3. The Banished
4. The People
5. The Loyal
Part 3: Exclusion
6. The Exclusion Consensus
7. Afterlives under Exclusion
Epilogue: The Modern American Alien
Appendix A: Sites of Anti-Chinese Expulsions and Attempted Expulsions, 1885–1887
Appendix B: Chinese Immigration to the United States, 1850–1904
Abbreviations
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index

詹姆斯·法罗斯:中国的大跃退

詹姆斯·法罗斯(James Fallows),《大西洋》杂志著名记者,也算是中国问题专家。其长文《中国的大跃退》(China’s Great Leap Backward),作为封面文章,发表于《大西洋》2017年12月号。尽管是一年多以前的文章了,今天仍然值得推荐给尚未读过的朋友:

英文全文:China’s Great Leap Backward @ The Atlantic

全文音频版:

音频文件下载

New Book: Legal Orientalism: China, the United States, and Modern Law. By Teemu Ruskola

Legal Orientalism: China, the United States, and Modern LawLegal Orientalism: China, the United States, and Modern Law(《法律东方主义:中国·美国·现代法律》). By Teemu Ruskola. Harvard University Press 2013. ISBN: 0674073061, 9780674073067.

Since the Cold War ended, China has become a global symbol of disregard for human rights, while the United States has positioned itself as the world’s chief exporter of the rule of law. How did lawlessness become an axiom about Chineseness rather than a fact needing to be verified empirically, and how did the United States assume the mantle of law’s universal appeal? In a series of wide-ranging inquiries, Teemu Ruskola investigates the history of “legal Orientalism”: a set of globally circulating narratives about what law is and who has it. For example, why is China said not to have a history of corporate law, as a way of explaining its “failure” to develop capitalism on its own? Ruskola shows how a European tradition of philosophical prejudices about Chinese law developed into a distinctively American ideology of empire, influential to this day.

The first Sino-U.S. treaty in 1844 authorized the extraterritorial application of American law in a putatively lawless China. A kind of legal imperialism, this practice long predated U.S. territorial colonialism after the Spanish-American War in 1898, and found its fullest expression in an American district court’s jurisdiction over the “District of China.” With urgent contemporary implications, legal Orientalism lives on in the enduring damage wrought on the U.S. Constitution by late nineteenth-century anti-Chinese immigration laws, and in the self-Orientalizing reforms of Chinese law today. In the global politics of trade and human rights, legal Orientalism continues to shape modern subjectivities, institutions, and geopolitics in powerful and unacknowledged ways.

杨国斌:The Power of the Internet in China

The Power of the Internet in ChinaThe Power of the Internet in China: Citizen Activism Online by Guobin Yang, Columbia University Press, June 2009

Since the mid-1990s, the Internet has revolutionized popular expression in China, enabling users to organize, protest, and influence public opinion in unprecedented ways. Despite efforts to control these activities, online activism has been an agent of immense social change, allowing common citizens to disseminate content and openly challenge the authority of political and economic elites.

Guobin Yang’s pioneering study follows the rise of this dynamic protest and the forces that keep it relevant and unique. Online activism encompasses an innovative range of rituals, genres, and styles, and state efforts to constrain it have only led to more creative acts of subversion. Internet businesses have encouraged these contentious activities, generating an unusual synergy between capitalism and civil organizations that sponsor critique. Based on ten years of meticulous research and grounded in theories of social movements and the public sphere, Yang’s study emphasizes the mutual shaping of technology and society and highlights the important role of a transnational diaspora in the making of a Chinese Internet culture. In conclusion, Yang argues that online activism reflects important structural changes in contemporary China and points to a new era of informational politics.

Guobin Yang is an associate professor in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures at Barnard College, Columbia University. He is coeditor, with Ching Kwan Lee, of Re-envisioning the Chinese Revolution: The Politics and Poetics of Collective Memories in Reform China.

“A boundary-breaking book. . . . A snap review of some of the hottest issues in front of the Chinese public today.” — Daniel Little, Understanding Society

“Mr. Yang’s work is essential reading.” — Rebecca MacKinnon, Far Eastern Economic Review

“This work represents a major advancement in scholarly research. . . unquestionably, it should be on reading lists for courses related to social and political development in China. . . it is highly recommended to all. ” — Jonathan Sullivan, The China Quarterly

“Of interest to sociologists and students of mass communications . . . Recommended.” — Choice

“Essential reading for all those seeking a more nuanced account of the power of the internet in China than that provided by international media and human rights organizations.” — Colin Hawes, The China Journal

“Yang develops a lens that centers on concrete issues and situations that are both empirical-practical and conceptual-theoretical.” — Peter Marolt, International Journal of Communication

“The Power of the Internet in China by Yang Guobin is destined to be classic and obligatory reading for anyone interested in understanding the role of the internet in people’s struggle for freedom, justice, and democracy in China.” — Lokman Tsui, China Information

“The Power of the Internet in China offers us not only a rich study of Chinese

online activism but also raises significant questions about China’s civil society.” — Ming-Cheng Miriam Lo, Contemporary Sociology

“An attentive and richly detailed study of the Chinese Internet—certainly the best book I’ve read on the subject. Guobin Yang does a very fine job of summarizing new developments and vividly describing a variety of online communities.” — Patricia M. Thornton, University of Oxford

“In today’s China, who benefits more from the power of the Internet: citizen activists or state authorities? Guobin Yang comes down decisively on the side of the citizenry, seeing online activism as the revival of a Chinese revolutionary spirit that is setting the stage for the long-awaited democratic breakthrough. Although the conclusion of this richly documented study is certainly controversial, the careful research and clear reasoning are incontrovertible. Whether or not Yang’s optimistic prognosis proves correct, his excellent scholarship and engaging style make for an impressive contribution to a timely debate.” — Elizabeth J. Perry, Henry Rosovsky Professor of Government, Harvard University

“Much has been written about the role the Internet has played in political campaigns and grassroots politics in America, but the real transformative power of the Internet can be seen in places like China and Iran, where authoritarian governments are faced with the irreversible power of individuals coming together online. This book gives an in-depth look at the explosion of Internet use in China and the dramatic political and cultural changes it has enabled. The ultimate instrument of individual empowerment is remaking one of the most controlling societies on earth. What Chinese leadership will be forced to recognize is that this democratic surge must be accommodated. Failure to do so will either stop economic development or result in the current regime’s loss of power.” — Governor Howard Dean

“Transformations in China and transformations of communication are two of the great stories of the contemporary era. They come together in Guobin Yang’s outstanding study of online activism in the People’s Republic. The Internet expands activists’ sense of themselves as participants in global movements, and it is used in distinctively Chinese ways. It circulates repertoires of collective action and occasions new forms of action. In this well-researched and well-written book, Yang gives the best account available of this experimentation, innovation, and social change.” — Craig Calhoun, president, Social Science Research Council, and University Professor of the Social Sciences, New York University

Determinants of the Olympic Success of Different Countries–Gary Becker

Hundreds of millions of men and women all over the world have been tuned to their television sets and clued to their computer screens as they followed the Olympic extravaganza in Beijing. The pride taken by people of different countries in their own athletes as they compete against the best from other countries is truly remarkable. To Americans, the main interest this year has been Michael Phelps’ pursuit of a record setting 8 gold medals in swimming-which he accomplished- the gold and silver medals won by two young American girls in the all around gymnastic finals, and the new basketball “dream team” that so far has easily won against China, Spain, and elsewhere. The Chinese have been thrilled by their successes in gymnastics and diving, the Australians by their swimmers, and the Rumanian’s by the victory of their 38 year old mother in the women’s marathon. Pictures were shown of how in 2004 the almost all black country of Zimbabwe with a history of significant racial conflict gave a wildly enthusiastic parade to a white Zimbabwe swimmer who won a gold medal during the Athens Olympics. And so it goes in other countries whose athletes have won medals.

All the accolades given to Olympic medal winners-especially to those who get gold- provides plenty of incentive for young and talented athletes to train hard for the Olympics in the hope of becoming a medal winner. When practically all participants in the Olympics are working hard in their training regimes, and since various random factors, such as illness, injuries, and psychological state are extremely important, it becomes difficult to predict individual winners in many of the competitions. Yet it is rather easy to predict quite well the total number of medals won by different nations.

The article “A Tale of Two Seasons: Participation and Medal Counts at the Summer and Winter Olympic Games”, published in 2004 in the Social Science Quarterly by Professor Daniel Johnson of Colorado College and a co-author, examines the determinants of how many medals were won by different countries in the summer and winter Olympics since the end of World War II. Their regression analysis shows that two very important variables are the total population and per capita incomes of different countries. Also important are whether a country has an authoritarian government-such as communism- a country’s climate, and whether a country is the host country for a particular Olympics. These five variables taken together predict closely the total number of medals won by different countries in the winter as well as summer Games.

Umberto Eco: See China, Learn What Europe Must Become

By Umberto Eco

Umberto EcoThis is hardly the best time to be making predictions about the prospects of a united Europe. The divergent positions European countries have taken on the question of the Iraq conflict have shown just how divided the continent is.

The eastern countries’ entry brings in a contrast between old democracies that are prepared to cede at least some of their national sovereignty to the European Union, and younger democracies determined to reinforce their newly formed national governments, even if it means making alliances outside Europe’s boundaries.

The way things are looking, we have on the one hand a European consciousness and identity that really do exist, and on the other a set of circumstances that directly threatens that very unity.