Chinese Studies Research Group Lunch Seminar 11 April 2008

Chinese Studies Research Group Lunch Seminar

Date: Friday, 11 April, 2008

Location: Tutorial / Committee Room, Ground floor, Baillieu Library.

RSVP to Bick-har Yeung bhy@unimelb.edu.au by 7th April 2008 for catering purpose.

Program

10:30 - 10:45

Registration and morning tea

10:45 - 11:00

Welcome (Jonathan Benney, President, Chinese Studies Research Group; Ph D Candidate, Asia Institute )

11:00 - 11:40

Topic: The Symbolic Politics of the Beijing Olympics

Speaker: Kingsley Edney, PhD Candidate, School of Political Science, Sociology, and Criminology.

Summary: The Olympic Games have always been a site of significant political symbolism, and the Beijing Olympics are now likely to be the most politically charged Games since the end of the Cold War, lying at the intersection of a number of crucial issues in Chinese politics such as regime legitimacy, nationalism, international status, development and the environment, and what it means to be a ‘responsible great power.’ Using an approach that focuses on the discursive power of symbols and rituals in domestic and international politics, this presentation will outline a framework for understanding the challenges facing the Chinese government in its attempts to use the Beijing Olympics to support its pursuit of core policy objectives.

11:45 - 12:25

Speaker: Jiawen Ai, Master Candidate (by thesis), School of Political Science, Criminology & Sociology.

Summary:

Ideologically, China, at least in name, remains a socialist power adhering to the doctrines of Marxism, Leninism, Maoism (Hu 2007b) . Indeed, Marxism, Leninism, and Maoism have already been dead in China . Notably, the death of communism as any meaningful ideology left a vacuum in the Chinese political ideology which tended to be filled by the reinforcement of ‘Chinese nationalism'. The Chinese leadership has supported the emergence of nationalism - not to save communism but to fill the vacuum after the death of communism in China . Communism no longer has any appeal for the population generally or the elite. The possibilities of the trends toward Chinese nationalism are these: a nationalist China that continues its autocratic regime, or a fragmented and communist China that is desperate to control its population.

The study of contemporary Chinese nationalism aims to seek answers to the following basic questions: what ideology of collective love of the nation, the culture, and the history is deconstructed and constructed? In what ways, does it challenge or cooperate with the loyalty to the party? How and why does the party-state accommodate or abandon Chinese nationalist projects, discourses and evaluations? And what is the general impact of Chinese nationalist discourse on the contemporary Chinese political system? It is argued that ‘Chinese nationalism' used by the Communist Party to legitimise its authoritarian rule seems to be a double-edged sword: Chinese nationalism could be efficient to fulfil the ideological void left by Marxism. It could also lead the nation to constructing a loyalty to Chinese traditional culture beyond a loyalty to the party, which could undermine the legitimacy of the communist and revolutionary party.

12:30 - 1:10

Topic: What is the relationship between floating population and urban public space in China urbanization.

Summary: Floating population, which refers to the people who leave their rural land and go to the city to find new jobs, form a long term flux of migrants from rural to urban area in recent 20 years in China . There are many new meanings of public space for these new comers to understand. A tension exists between them and indigenous urban people about the use and meaning of urban public space. The research aims to get a better understanding of the ways in which rural and urban populations in Chinese cities can most effectively share urban public space.

1:15 - 2: 00 Lunch

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