Rising Powers and State Transformation: The Case of China

This article draws attention to the transformation of statehood under globalisation as a crucial dynamic shaping the emergence and conduct of ‘rising powers’. That states are becoming increasingly fragmented, decentralised and internationalised is noted by some international political economy and global governance scholars, but is neglected in International Relations treatments of rising powers. This article critiques this neglect, demonstrating the importance of state transformation in understanding emerging powers’ foreign and security policies, and their attempts to manage their increasingly transnational interests by promoting state transformation elsewhere, particularly in their near-abroad. It demonstrates the argument using the case of China, typically understood as a classical ‘Westphalian’ state. In reality, the Chinese state’s substantial disaggregation profoundly shapes its external conduct in overseas development assistance and conflict zones like the South China Sea, and in its promotion of extraterritorial governance arrangements in spaces like the Greater Mekong Subregion

Culture as history: envisioning change across and beyond "eastern" and "western" civilizations in the May Fourth era

This essay examines an influential debate that took place during China’sMay Fourth era (circa 1915–1927) concerning the character of ‘‘Eastern’’ and ‘‘Western’’ civilizations. In this debate, both moderates and radicals wrestle with a growing awareness that cultures have not only a spatial existence but also a historical career, which has encouraged the development of certain institutions and attitudes and discouraged others. Spatial terms mark not only the places where knowledge circulates, but also the particular pasts-and thus futures-toward which Chinese thinkers align themselves. This way of figuring ‘‘East’’ and ‘‘West’’ enables May Fourth thinkers to do more than sort civilizational characteristics into categories of the inevitably universal and the irredeemably particular, as many commentators have assumed. It also facilitates the travel of cultural products and practices across the spatial as well as temporal boundaries originally seen to contain them

The beginnings of tourism in Macau and Canton in the XIXth century: from a border territory to an urban place

Este texto tem por objetivo apresentar uma reflexão geral sobre os primórdios do processo de transformação de Macau e Cantão em lugares turísticos. Trata-se de um estudo exploratório conduzido a partir da análise de relatos de viajantes ocidentais em Macau e Cantão, entre as décadas de 1830 e de 1870. Observa-se como o uso lúdico ou turístico do espaço urbano contribuiu para a transformação global da percepção dessas cidades que, através dessas práticas, aparecem menos fragmentadas e segregadas. Os primeiros guias turísticos de Cantão e Macau vêm reforçar a ideia de transformação das representações desses territórios de fronteira, que eram até então vistos como uma simples zona de contatos e intercâmbios comerciais entre a China e o Ocidente, em lugares urbanos, inseridos em um circuito turístico internacional e em vias de adquirir dimensão cosmopolita.This text aims to present a broad reflection on the beginnings of Macao and Canton transformation process into tourist places. This exploratory study is conducted through an analysis of Western travelers’ accounts in Macau and Canton, between the 1830s and the 1870s. We can observe how recreational or tourist use of urban space contributes to the overall transformation of the perception of these cities that appear, in this context, less fragmented and segregated. The first tour guides on Canton and Macau emphasize the transformation of the representation of these border territories, which were until then seen as a simple zone of contacts and trade exchanges between China and the West. Macau and Canton are then described as urban places, inserted in an international tourist circuit and that have acquired a cosmopolitan dimension

China's Regional Policy and the Influence of the EU Assistance

Firstly, a short outlook has been given on regional inequalities in China. Secondly, the EU assistance programmes and sectoral dialogue have been analysed. Finally, the major research problem - what are the limitations of the EU's assistance influence on China - has been investigated

CONTEMPORARY CONFUCIAN AND ISLAMIC APPROACHES TO DEMOCRACY AND HUMAN RIGHTS

Both Confucian and Islamic traditions stand in fraught and internally contested relationships with democracy and human rights. It can easily appear that the two traditions are in analogous positions with respect to the values associated with modernity, but a central contention of this essay is that Islam and Confucianism are not analogous in this way. Positions taken by advocates of the traditions are often similar, but the reasoning used to justify these positions differs in crucial ways. Whether one approaches these questions from an intra-traditional, cross-traditional, or multi-traditional perspective, the essay shows that there is great value in getting clear on the ways in which ones textual canon may constrain one. In the end, we will see that while there are creative Islamic approaches to taking human rights seriously, the looser constraints under which Confucians operate today may make things easier for Confucian advocates of human rights and democracy

State intervention, local indebtedness, investment overheating and their systemic background during global crisis in China

This paper focuses on the immediate economic and systemic reasons of steadily increasing local government indebtedness and investment overheating in China. These two phenomena emerged between 2008 and 2011 as a direct consequence of an external shock caused by the global crisis and the subsequent internal reaction in the form of intensified stimulating state intervention. New chances for resource distribution and investments through state intervention mobilized distribution priorities and politically rational economic behavior of actors, characteristic to party-state systems. Locations of mobilization were defined by the decentralized Chinese system specifics along the intertwined institutional party-state structure. Systemic characteristics and its Chinese specifics together resulted in investment overheating, and steadily growing local indebtedness through large and state-owned enterprises and local governments. This process was further amplified by the characteristics of transforming economy in China as actors in the private sphere were mobilized by the increased input demand of those privileged by the systemic priorities of state intervention

The New Age of Hybridity and Clash of Norms: China, BRICS and Challenges of Global Governance in a Post-liberal International Order

This article sketches an analytical framework to account for new patterns of global governance. We characterize the emergent post-liberal international order as a new age of hybridity, which signifies that no overriding set of paradigms dominate global governance. Instead we have a complex web of competing norms, which creates new opportunities as well as major elements of instability, uncertainty and anxiety. In the age of hybridity, non-Western great powers (led by China) play an increasingly counter-hegemonic role in shaping new style multilateralism – ontologically fragmented, normatively inconsistent, and institutionally incoherent. We argue that democracy paradox constitutes the fundamental issue at stake in this new age of hybridity. On the one hand, global power transitions seem to enable ‘democratization of globalization’ by opening more space to the hitherto excluded non-Western states to make their voices heard. On the other hand, emerging pluralism in global governance is accompanied by the regression of liberal democracy and spread of illiberalism that enfeeble ‘globalization of democratization.

The historical evolution of accounting in China (novissima sinica): effects of culture (2nd part).

Este artículo intenta explicar los criterios que sustentan la idea de que la contabilidad China ha sido conformada durante el pasado siglo con arreglo a factores culturales, económicos y políticos. Asimismo se propone estudiar los fenómenos históricos experimentados por la contabilidad china en el transcurso de los años, y evaluar comparativa y críticamente los efectos culturales de los mismos con las transformaciones políticas y económicas que han tenido influencia en el desarrollo de la contabilidad China. This paper attempts to argue the criteria which claim that Chinese accounting has been shaped by together with cultural, economical and political factors in the last century. This paper also aims to compare historical phenomena which occurred in Chinese accounting over the years, and then to assess comparatively or critically the effects of culture with politic and the economic transformations on the development of Chinese accounting.Contabilidad comparativa, contabilidad china, factores culturales, historia, sociología. Chinese accounting, comparative accounting, cultural factors, evolution, history, sociology.