Duke East Asian Nexus 2.2 by Duke East Asia Nexus

DUKE EAST ASIA NEXUS The Nuclear Tokyo Family China’s Criminal Justice System Korean Popular Culture China’s UN Policy 1971 to Present Feminine Power in Japan US Foreign Policy on North Korea Population Registers in Nagasaki A Hong Kong Love Letter China’s Naval Military Power

American Response to China’s Military Build-Up IONUT POPESCU

Whose Blues? Folk Music and ‘Enka’ in 1960s Japan BRIAN WHITE

A Case for Political Determinism: Comparative Study of the Public and Private Sectors in China and India JIAKUN JACK ZHANG, ADONICA BLACK

Continuity We Can Believe in: Obama and Bush on DPRK TERENCE HSIEH Volume 2 Issue 2

2011

DUKE EAST ASIA nexus Paul Horak President Kkot Byoul Hannah Yi Editor-in-Chief Jack Wagner Managing Editor Peggy Li Chief Secretary Alison Cho Chief Programming Officer Haoxiaohan Helen Cai Director of Conferences Shuya Dong Chief Financial Offier Derek Mong Chief of Personnel Alex MacLeish Director of Public Relations Editorial Board Haoxiaohan Helen Cai Jose Lamazares Allyson Santini Peggy Li Bruce Xu Advisors Richard Brodhead Dominic Sachsenmaier Simon Partner Bai Gao Special thanks to James Wong for the original DEAN logo design, Vice Provost Gilbert Merckx, and Dean Stephen Nowicki for their generous support. Copyright ÂŠ 2011 by Duke East Asia Nexus (DEAN) at Duke University DEAN receives support from the Asian Pacific Studies Institute and from the John Spencer Bassett Memorial Fund. DEAN publishes full-length academic papers related to East Asia. The journal is released biannually. DEAN also publishes continuously on its website:

www.dukenexus.org.

UNDERGRADUATE CERTIFICATE IN EAST ASIAN STUDIES The Asian/Pacific Studies Institute (APSI) at Duke University is pleased to announce a new undergraduate East Asian Studies Certificate program. This certificate provides students with the opportunity for interdisciplinary, in-depth study of historical and contemporary East Asian societies and cultures. In addition to offering courses and a certificate on completion of the requirements, the APSI also sponsors lectures and films and offers multiple scholarships for study abroad in East Asia. Undergraduates will also have the opportunity to publish their academic work for the certificate in the student-run Duke East Asia Nexus Journal. Questions about the EAS Certificate? Contact Faculty Advisor, Professor Dominic Sachsenmaier (dominic.sachsenmaier@duke.edu) or Outreach Coordinator, Karla Loveall (karla.loveall@duke.edu). EAS CERTIFICATE REQUIREMENTS: •

Students must take at least six courses from the APSI designated East Asian certificate course list (Note: language courses are NOT included in this list).

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Students must take courses across at least two departments or programs.

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No more than three courses in any one department or program.

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One of the six courses must be from the list of approved introductory courses for the certificate.

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One of the six courses must be an approved capstone seminar course.

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At least four of the courses must be at the 100-level or above.

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No more than two of the courses may also be used to satisfy the requirements of any major, minor, or other certificate program.

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In addition to the six courses taken for the certificate, students must either complete two years of a Duke language program in Chinese, Japanese, or Korean, or they may demonstrate equivalent competence by passing a proficiency test.

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Students are required to complete an e-portfolio that reflects their accomplishments in the certificate program.

Duke East Asia Nexus Volume 2 Issue 2 2011

With this issue of our journal DEAN has moved to the next level. This past semester has been one of great change and ambitionâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and this issue is perfect evidence. We received submissions from around the country and the globe and what you see before you is a truly international piece of collaboration. It speaks to the almost universal appeal of East Asia and the growing presence that DEAN has in engaging it. DEAN took a big step toward cultivating greater understanding of East Asia when it sponsored the inaugural Duke-UNC China Leadership Summit in late February. The two-day conference was a series of balanced panels on crosscutting issues between the United States and China as well as intimate seminars that prompted forward-looking discussions on relations between the two countries. Approximately 25 students attended from each university, and we look forward with great anticipation to the future leaders who will join us this upcoming October for the next iteration of CLS. As a young and growing organization nearing maturity, it is exciting to be a part of great initiatives like CLS that will ensure a long and lasting legacy for DEAN. Our rapidly growing influence, our exploding membership and our self-propelling ambition give us a lot of momentumâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;it has carried us far, but we still have a long way to go. As we journey ahead we will continue to pursue excellence and promote understanding and always look for new ways to do so. Regardless of what we dream up, there will always be an emphasis put on this publication. It is our voice, our outstretched hand, our enduring footprint. It embodies everything for which we stand: extreme curiosity, hard-earned excellence, and unfailing teamwork. DEAN has always been a rather entrepreneurial organization and this is our best product yet. I hope you enjoy it. All the best, Paul Horak Trinity College 2013 President of DEAN

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Table of Contents Essays American Response to China’s Military Build-Up Ionut Popescu 6 Mai Homu Shugi: Expressing and Shaping the Nuclear Tokyo Family Gregory Bennett 16 A Case for Political Determinism: Comparative Study of the Public and Private Sectors in China and India Jack Zhang and Adonica Black 21 Cogs in the Culture Machine: Changing Producer-Audience Relationships in South Korean Popular Culture Amanda Ng 30 The Emergence of a Superpower: China’s UN Policies from 1971 to Present Della Fok 42 Feminine Power and Protest in Postmodern Japanese Society Amy Xu 56 2011

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China’s Criminal Justice System in a Globalizing World Haoxiaohan Helen Cai 63 Whose Blues? Folk Music and ‘Enka’ in 1960’s Japan Brian White 72 The Obama and Bush PResidencies and North Korea: Continuity We Can Believe in Terence Hsieh 82 Treasures from Population Registers in Nagasaki Hirado-Cho Youjia Li 89 MEMOIR A Hong kong love Letter Sean Dinsmore 104

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Dear Reader, It is my honor to present to you the second issue of the second volume of the Duke East Asia Nexus Journal. As the Editor in Chief, nothing is more pleasing than witnessing the DEAN Journal grow and expand every semester. Without a doubt, this semester has been very ambitious and also very rewarding for the Editorial Board. Started as a journal for undergraduate students, DEAN is now publishing not only the work of one of Duke’s own Ph. D students, but also a beautiful piece of prose written by a freelance writer from Hong Kong. DEAN also reached out to other schools to broaden its writer community and readership. Gratefully, many scholars from the most prestigious American schools joined us in populating this issue. I dare say that this publication is now one step closer to the ultimate goal on which it was founded: to enrich the academic experience of college students and establish an international forum for the discussion of East Asian affairs. The true success of this issue comes from its balanced representation of East Asian countries and the diversity of its topics. In the journal, you will find an essay on China’s military build-up followed by another on a linguistic phenomenon in 1960’s Japan. Other papers on Japanese music, feminine sexuality, and religion will also give you deeper perspectives into Japanese culture. On the other hand, essays on China focus more on its government functions. They will broaden your view on China’s politics, economic structure, foreign policies, and judicial system. I also encourage you not to forget essays about the two Koreas. South Korean pop culture, which is receiving a considerable amount of attention lately, is fully described in one article, and North Korean issues—which have always been controversial—are discussed in depth in another. Our final selection is an opinion piece written by a freelance writer about his experiences in China; this particular work is very special indeed for it will take you to Hong Kong and let you venture through its streets. I do not doubt that you will enjoy, learn, and grow from every paper we selected for this journal. I myself was born and raised in a little town in South Korea. Back in those days when I was learning about the American Revolution in a Korean school classroom, the East and the West were getting more acquainted but did not know each other well enough to correctly understand and appreciate the differences that existed between them. However, our world today is quite different from how it was then; in both everyday conversations and the media, I hear greater words of understanding that show we are getting closer to some shared truth. It is no longer difficult to know and feel that the two worlds are intimately connected and will be more so in future. I believe DEAN as a publication can be a bridge that better connects the Western world to Asia by fostering academic interest and curiosity especially for young, adventurous minds. Now turn the page. Explore. Kkot Byoul Hannah Yi Trinity College 2013 Editor-in-Chief

2011

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American Response to China’s Naval Military Build-Up Ionut Popescu Abstract: Given the current importance of the United States and China in the international political and economic scene, a healthy strategic relationship between the United States and China in the future is going to be essential if these two countries want to continue to be strong economic and political allies. China’s recent naval military build-up has aroused much concern among certain groups of politicians and analysts who see this buildup as a threat to the United States’ historic hegemonic position in Asia, with the Chinese Navy possibly trying to reduce the US Navy’s influence in Asian waters. How should the US government respond to this build-up? This article analyzes the Pessimist and Optimist positions on this dilemma that faces US strategists, and provides a policy recommendation that approaches the military build-up as an opportunity for cooperation between the two nations. “China’s interest in a peaceful and stable environment that will support the country’s developmental goals is difficult to reconcile with new military capabilities that appear designed to challenge U.S. freedom of activity in the region and, if necessary, enforce China’s influence over its neighbors, including our regional allies and partners.” Adm. Robert Willard, chief of the U.S. Pacific Command, 13 January 2010

countries, particularly when military issues are involved, is often a source of concern for American and Chinese strategists alike. In recent months, Washington media out A successful bilateral strategic relets reported that there is a growing anxiety lationship between the United States and China is widely regarded inside the national amongst American government analysts regarding China’s “defiant” and “strident” security communities of both countries as key to maintaining a peaceful and prosper- tone in its recent dealings with Western ous international system in the twenty-first governments (Pomfret 2010). In this envicentury. Whether one thinks about nuclear ronment of a perceived worsening of relations between the two countries, remarks proliferation, piracy and freedom of the seas, climate change, or international finan- about China’s growing military power, such as the comment made recently by Adm. cial stability, there will be very few global Robert Willard, can have an inflammatory problems that can be tackled effectively without the cooperation of these two great impact and contribute to increased suspicions and tensions between the two governmilitary and economic powers. Therefore, ments. If the Obama administration wants an escalation of tensions between the two Introduction and Strategic Context

Ionut Popescu is a PhD candidate in international relations at Duke University, and is the Duke American Grand Strategy Program Fellow.

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to continue to develop a constructive ‘grand strategic’ relationship with China, it will have to incorporate in its policy framework a more coherent and explicit response to Beijing’s military build-up.

regional interests, and the ability (and desirability) of the United States to invest the material resources necessary to maintain the current balance of power in the region.

There are several aspects of the Despite a general acceptance of the Chinese military build-up that are worrynotion that the United States and China ing American defense analysts inside and are mutually interdependent financially, outside the government. The most tradiand therefore a war between the two is ex- tional concern has been the so-called Taitremely unlikely, there is nevertheless a vo- wan Scenario: in a hypothetical conflict over cal debate going on among Washington na- the island, China’s modern military systional security analysts on how the United tems could deny access to US Navy carrier States should respond to China’s continuing groups in the region and thus prevent the increase in the kinds of military capabilities United States from intervening to defend that some analysts argue is meant to coun- Taiwan. A second issue that has garnered a ter US influence and freedom of action in lot of recent attention has been that of Chithe region. At a strategic level, the Obama na’s development of high-end asymmetric administration could respond to China’s strategies and tactics, so-called shashoumilitary build-up by pursuing two different jian, or assassin’s mace. According to Andrew strategies: one option would aim to contain Krepinevich, “shashoujian forces can be exChina’s expanding military influence by pected to engage in attacks to disrupt and/ increasing the US military presence in the or destroy US battle networks, to include region and working with its allies to restrain cyber attacks and the use of Anti-Satellite China’s growing power, while another opweapons” (Krepinevich 2010). The third tion would aim to engage the Chinese in a aspect of the build-up is China’s sustained constructive dialogue and hope to integrate investment in maritime capabilities, both their emerging capabilities into a larger submarines and blue-water surface ships. effort to address common interests such as In many ways, the debate over how to deal fighting piracy, preventing nuclear prolifwith China’s increasing maritime capaeration, or maintaining peace and stability bilities is a microcosm of the larger grand in the East Asian littoral region. Whether strategic debate on how to accommodate one chooses one or the other depends on China’s rise, and therefore it is this naval how one judges a series of factors such as component of the Chinese military expanChina’s medium and long-term strategic sion that will be the topic of this article. intentions, the extent to which their current capabilities pose a real military threat to US The Pessimist View of China’s Na2011

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val Build-up and the Containment Policy Option For realist scholars of world politics who believe in the zero-sum nature of world power politics, China’s continuing increase in military power and influence in the region will eventually come at the expense of American geopolitical interests. As MIT’s Thomas Cristensen explains in International Security: The debate about China as a peer competitor revolves around simple realist notions of how international politics work: Power is what matters; and what matters in power is one’s relative capabilities compared with those of others, especially other great powers. For the pessimists, the Chinese military of the twenty-first century is replacing the Soviet military of the pre-Gorbachev years and the Japanese economy of the 1970s as the next big purported threat to American global leadership. (Christensen 2001) Even though China’s military power is in relative terms far behind that of the United States, Cristensen argues that “…with certain new equipment and certain strategies, China can pose major problems for American security interests, and especially for Taiwan, without the slightest pretense of catching up with the United States by an overall measure of national military power or technology” (Christensen 2001). Similar to the reasoning underlying the assassin’s mace concept popularized by Krepinevich, Cristensen worries about the Chinese in8

vestment in sophisticated asymmetric weapon systems that could allow them to deny access in the vicinity of China’s coast to the qualitatively superior US Navy warships. For the proponents of this “pessimistic” school of thought, the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s (PLAN) weapons procurement programs in recent decades, as well as PLAN’s new operational doctrines, are a great source of concern. China’s sustained purchases of attack submarines have been regarded by these analysts as indicative of an aggressive intent to “push” the US Pacific Fleet further away from the East Asian littoral. MIT professor Taylor Fravel noted in an extensive study of China’s military development that “Since 1995, China has commissioned 28 new submarines, including 12 advanced Kilo-class Russian vessels as well as several classes of domestically developed diesel and nuclear- powered attack boats” (Fravel 2008). Krepinevich warns that these modern Kilo-class submarines could pose a deadly threats to US Navy carrier strike forces operating in the region: The Kilos are armed with advanced wake-homing and wire-guided torpedoes of Russian design…The eight newer Kilo SSK are armed with the highly capable Russian-designed Klub ASCM (Anti-Ship Cruise Missile) Sizzler. The Sizzler’s attack profile is specifically designed to defeat the US Aegis antiair warfare system, penetrate a task force’s defenses, and strike high-value surface warships, to include carriers. (Krepinevich 2010)

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Chinese naval analysts often openly admit that even though they will not be able to build a carrier strike force similar to the US Navy’s anytime soon, the use of fast attack submarines could allow them to accomplish their strategic objective of sea denial at a much lesser cost. To sum up this argument, the “China hawks” argue that the procurement program of the PLAN portrays a clear desire to reduce the ability of the US Navy to operate in the East Asian theater and that the PLAN will soon be coming dangerously close to accomplishing that goal. In addition to the short-term concern about “sea denial,” there is also a longer-term aspect of the Chinese naval build-up that worries the “pessimists.” In recent years, the PLAN appears to have taken important initial steps to develop a blue water “Mahanian” maritime capability, which is meant to accompany China’s rise to ‘superpower’ status and protect its rapidly expanding commercial interests. The acquisition of nuclear-power submarines and of advanced surface combatants is regarded as signs of China’s long-term ambitions to expand the mission of their fleet beyond sea denial and control of their nearby littoral areas. Professors James Holmes and Toshi Yoshihara have documented how the theories of sea power advocated by Alfred Thayer Mahan have a strong influence on how Chinese strategists perceive the present and future roles of the PLAN in China’s grand strategy (Holmes 2011

and Yoshihara 2005). After examining a large amount of Chinese documents and research papers dealing with this topic, the two authors uncovered some worrisome trends in how at least some Chinese strategists think about missions of the PLAN in the 21st century. Some passages from Holmes and Yoshihara’s study are worth quoting at length below, as they offer a valuable perspective into modern Chinese naval doctrine: Mahan’s appeal to economics resonates powerfully in today’s China, which is at once preoccupied with economic development and increasingly reliant on seaborne commerce for oil and other commodities. So does his call for a powerful navy— suggesting that China’s maritime strategy will take on an increasingly military hue… In Zhongguo Junshi Kexue { the influential journal of the PLA Academy of Military Science and the China Military Science Association}, a senior officer used Mahan to justify China’s control of communications, especially the “strategic passages” which goods and materials had to traverse… The author cited Mahan’s dictum that economic prosperity hinged on the deployment of naval forces at strategic locations… ‘It is extremely risky for a major power such as China to become overly dependent on foreign import without adequate protection.’ (Holmes and Yoshihara 2005) While the potential threat to US interests from a Chinese blue-water navy is significantly less clear (at least in the short- to medium-term) than in the case of the PLAN’s sea denial capabilities, the advocates of the “pessimistic” school of thought neverthe-

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less argue that the United States needs to take this long-term challenge seriously and consequently increase its investment in naval forces to maintain its advantage over China’s navy in the long run. Then how do these “pessimists” suggest that the United States should address this problem? The set of policies proposed by these analysts could best be described as a muscular, Reaganite version of containment. They emphasize the need to engage in a sustained US military build-up of naval and air forces designed to counter China’s emerging asymmetric capabilities and to strengthen our alliances in the region. One of the most vocal advocates of these policies, Princeton professor and former Bush administration official Aaron Friedberg writes in gloomy terms about the consequences of failing to adopt such countermeasures to China’s build-up:

of thought are skeptical of potential opportunities for cooperation with authoritarian China and instead emphasize the opportunity to “balance” against China’s rising power by deepening the US alliance relations with fellow regional democracies such as India, Japan, and Taiwan. The “Optimistic View” of China’s Naval Build-up and the Engagement Policy Option

At the core of the “optimistic view” of China’s development of maritime capability is not so much a rosy view of Beijing’s present and future intentions, as a belief that China’s naval capabilities, at least in the medium term, cannot pose a significant threat to US regional security or strategic interests. On the contrary, some of China’s emerging capabilities could serve the common interests of both countries to the extent that PLAN and the US Navy America’s influence in and access to Asia will be could find ways to work together to address drastically reduced, with harmful long-term conshared challenges such as piracy, humanisequences for its security, prosperity and ability to tarian crises caused by natural disasters, promote the spread of liberal democracy, if it is seen or the proliferation of WMD materials. to be in long-term decline relative to China or, even Therefore, rather than hyping the potential worse, if it appears irresolute, incompetent, unwill- threat from China and adopting countering or simply unable to fulfill its commitments… If measures that worsen the “security dilemit wants to reassure its strategic partners and bolster ma” between the two countries, US leaders deterrence, Washington must find ways to counter should follow a policy of engagement that China’s evolving anti-access capabilities. If it does promotes increased cooperation between not, America’s long-standing military dominance in the two militaries. East Asia will quickly disappear. (Friedberg 2009) The first important area of disagreeFriedberg and other members of this school ment between the “pessimist school” and 10

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the “optimist school” is the extent to which China’s recent build-up could really threaten the US Navy’s operations in the East Asian littoral. Contrary to the opinion of Aaron Friedberg and others, Boston College professor Robert Ross argues that: America’s vital security interests, including in East Asia, are all in the maritime regions. With superior maritime power, the United States can not only dominate regional sea-lanes but also guarantee a favorable balance of power that prevents the emergence of a regional hegemon. And despite China’s military advances and its challenge to America’s ability to project its power in the region, the United States can be confident in its ability to retain maritime dominance well into the twenty-first century. (Ross 2009) For example, Ross contends that even though China indeed purchased a number of quiet Kilo-class diesel submarines in recent years, the US Navy in turn constantly increased its capability to accurately track Chinese submarines. Moreover, the electronic-warfare capabilities of US carrier strike forces could seriously hamper PLAN’s command-and-control and intelligence collection systems during any potential conflict. Regarding China’s blue-water “Mahanian” ambitions, even if the PLAN were successful in its long-term quest to build an aircraft carrier, this would still pose almost no threat to the United States in a crisis due to the likely vulnerability of such a carrier to advanced US anti-ship missiles. Ross’s military assessment of the limited 2011

potential of PLAN to challenge the US Navy is not unique. In his study “Bear Facts and Dragon Boats: Rethinking the Modernization of Chinese Naval Power,” Marshall Beier stated that the “PLAN’s comprehensive submarine procurement efforts are most appropriately characterized as necessary modernization of the sort to be expected of any major navy and not as anything akin to an ominous ‘build up’” (Beier 2005). Similarly, regarding China’s emerging blue water capabilities, he is far less worried than the analysts from the pessimist school: “Despite the PLAN’s modernization program and the adoption of an ‘offshore’ defensive posture, China is nowhere near about to acquiring a ‘blue water’ capability in the (neo)Mahanian sense of projecting power or securing control of the sea” (Beier 2005). A second relevant point of contention between the China “pessimists” and “optimists” refers to how much stock one should put in the doctrinal and strategic pronouncements that come out of the PLAN. While “pessimists” often quote some of the most hawkish Chinese officials, the “optimists” make the point that one should take the more belligerent declarations with a grain of salt because they may reflect the influence of domestic politics or parochial interests rather than a purely strategic decision that would guide future policies. A recent International Security article documents how Chinese “naval nationalism” influences the thinking of important

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groups both within the PLAN and also within the Chinese government elite more broadly. Moreover, the “pragmatic” wing of the Chinese elites who argue that the cost of a truly blue water navy would be prohibitive given China’s many other national priorities, and that moreover China’s soft power and its peaceful rise image in the region would be hurt by such a build-up (Ross 2009). Ross worries that the more bombastic pronouncements of the PLAN hardliners could be used by American adherents of a more belligerent policy towards China to justify a US counter-build-up and more generally a policy of containment. As he puts it, even though China’s naval nationalism will not challenge US maritime security, “U.S.-China naval competition has the potential to politicize the full agenda of U.S.-China relations and challenge cooperation on a wide range of issues, including cooperation on nuclear nonproliferation on the Korean Peninsula, the Taiwan issue, bilateral economic issues, and human rights” (Ross 2009). A third way in which the “optimist” and the “pessimist” schools differ is on how much potential for cooperation exists between the PLAN and the US Navy (and other regional powers) in addressing certain global problems. Perhaps not too surprisingly, Chinese scholars and academics portray Chinese maritime policy in a way that emphasizes its “soft power” aspects rather than the hard power ones discussed by some PLAN officials. Professor 12

Mingjiang Li, for example, who is one of the main proponents of the less militaryfocused view of China’s maritime role in East Asia, argues that the focus of the PLA has broadened in recent years from merely addressing immediate security threats to engaging in a broader range of missions such as non-proliferation, peace-keeping, disaster relief, and military cooperation exercises and with other regional partners (Li 2010). Li concludes that, given Beijing’s desire to maintain a peaceful international environment that would allow it to focus on domestic development, the PLAN’s activities will be part of this broader grand strategy of “proactive engagement” (Li 2010). Therefore, he argues, the opportunities for cooperation between the PLAN and the US Navy are more significant than some in Washington realize. The “optimist” school favors a policy of engagement on the part of the United States as well. Jonathan Holslag argues in the pages of Washington Quarterly that China’s increase in military capabilities is only natural given its expanding economic interests and that this need not necessarily worry the United States. On the contrary, the U.S. should consider China more of a “partner rather than a rival,” recognize the many common concerns such as piracy, maintaining the flow of commerce, stabilizing failed states, or non-proliferation, and ultimately explore “options for cooperation” more vigorously (Holslag 2009). Holslag even goes on to state that: “It is

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widely recognized that for various economic, diplomatic, and security reasons, the U.S.-China partnership is inevitable. Bringing in the military dimension can make this relationship even more robust and stable” (Holslag 2009). Therefore, for advocates of engagement, the rationale is based not only on a more positive assessment of China’s current naval capabilities and its intentions, but also on a grand strategic analysis, which leads them to conclude that cooperation with Beijing, including in the military realm, is a core component of an effective American grand strategy in the 21st century. Policy Recommendation: Incremental naval engagement with China Defense and military policies are an integral part of a country’s overall grand strategy. In the context of Obama’s grand strategy towards China, I believe that a maritime policy of incremental engagement towards the PLAN would best serve the United States national interest at this point in time. My recommended policy of incremental naval engagement incorporates many of the elements of the engagement strategy advocated by the “optimist school” discussed in the previous section of the paper. One important difference of nuance is my emphasis on the incremental nature of the policy. Before the US can fully embrace China’s increasing military role in the region and beyond, Washington must begin with small steps such as confidence-building 2011

measures and small-scale military cooperation exercises. If after these steps some of the concerns regarding Chinese capabilities and intentions diminish, then one could move more strongly towards developing a full-scale partnership aimed at addressing the shared challenges cited earlier in the article. However, if the PLAN does not seem interested in working closer together with the US Navy, and if they continue to advance their naval modernization program in a manner that could be judged to realistically imperil US freedom of action in the region, then one must reassess whether the cooperation-oriented naval policy strategy that I’m recommending is the most appropriate one. Moreover, I believe that devoting more material resources to countering China’s build-up would not only increase the risk of a naval arms race that worsens the security dilemma between the two states, but also imply some trade-offs in the allocation of American defense investments. Specifically, an increase in focus on a potential yet unlikely future conflict in East Asia means devoting less military resources to addressing current conflicts such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Given that defense spending overall is unlikely to increase in the coming years, such a trade-off is a real concern, and it is the reason why Secretary Gates warned the Pentagon planners against “next war-itis,” the exaggerated concern with potential future conventional threats to the detriment of current

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irregular ones (Gates 2008).

Lastly, in addition to being strategically sound from a geopolitical perspective Another reason why an incremental for the reasons presented above, a policy of engagement strategy is the most appropricooperation could also be more politically ate response to China’s naval build-up is feasible than the alternatives. An aggresthat it could lay the foundation for a stable sive containment policy is likely to genertransition in East Asia from an almost ate resistance on the part of the business unquestioned hegemonic position of the community which is heavily involved in United States, a legacy of World War II, commercials relations with China, as well to a power arrangement more reflective as in general on the part of the left-leaning of the realities of the twenty-first century. Democratic members of Congress who faThere is no reason why the United States vor relying on engagement and diplomacy and its regional allies should continue to rather than military power. On the other provide the bulk of international public hand, a full-pledged cooperation policy goods such as maintaining freedom of the may leave Obama vulnerable to criticism seas in the face of piracy attacks or confrom the Republicans and the more “hawkducting counter-proliferation maritime ish” or conservative Democrats, thus makoperations; as China’s economy grows, so ing it difficult to implement such an apdo its responsibilities to participate in colproach. As I believe that the most successful lective international actions meant to coun- foreign policy strategies over the long term ter threats to international security such as usually enjoy a significant amount of biparpiracy or proliferation of WMDs. Many tisan support, I think an essentially centrist Chinese strategists understand this, and the incremental engagement approach is more United States should adopt a policy aimed capable of sustaining such support than at encouraging China to become a “respon- either of the two more partisan alternatives. sible stakeholder” in the realm of maritime power as much as Washington does on other policy arenas such as climate change, trade, or international finance. As Robert Ross showed, there is a current debate inside the PLAN between “naval nationalists” and “naval pragmatists.” The United States should try to support the moderate and pragmatist faction by adopting a policy that encourages stronger partnership in securing the region.

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References Pomfret, John. “Newly Powerful China Defies Western Nations with Remarks, Policies.” The Washington Post. 15 March 2010.

“Gates: Pentagon must focus on Iraq, not future war.” Associated Press. May 13 2008. <http://cbs13.com/national/robert.gates.pentagon.2.722676.html>.

Pomfret, John. “China’s Strident Tone Raises Concerns among Western Governments, Analysts.” The Washington Post. 31 January 2010. Maze, Rick. “US Officials Wary of Chinese Military Buildup.” Army Times. 13 January 2010. Krepinevich, Andrew. “Why AirSea Battle.” Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. Washington, D.C.: 2010. Friedberg, Aaron and Ross Robert. “Here Be Dragons: Is China a Military Threat?” The National Interest (September-October, 2009). Cristensen, Thomas. “Posing Problems without Catching Up: China’s Rise and Challenges for U.S. Security Policy.” International Security. 25.4 (Spring 2001). Fravel, Taylor. “China’s Search for Military Power.” The Washington Quarterly. 31.3 (Summer 2008). Holmes, James and Toshi Yoshihara. “The Influence of Mahan upon China’s Maritime Strategy.” Comparative Strategy. 24 (2005). Beier, J. Marshall. “Bear Facts and Dragon Boats: Rethinking the Modernization of Chinese Naval Power.” Contemporary Security Policy. 26.2 (2005). Ross, Robert. “China’s Naval Nationalism: Sources, Prospects, and the US response.” International Security. 34.2 (Fall 2009). Li, Mingjiang. “China and Maritime Cooperation in East Asia: recent developments and future prospects.” Journal of Contemporary China. 62.19 (March 2010). Holslag, Jonathan. “Embracing China’s Global Ambitions.” The Washington Quarterly. (July 2009). 2011

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Mai Homu Shugi: Expressing and Shaping the Nuclear Tokyo Family Gregory Bennett Abstract: Though the Japanese language has the syntactic ability to express ownership in a noun phrase by utilizing the possessive particle, at a sociolinguistic level, expressing first-person possession includes a high risk of linguistically demonstrating a lack of humility on the part of the speaker. By the direct importation of the English-language possessive phrase “my home” into the Japanese grammar, mai homu shugi, or “my homeism,” linguistically bolstered and facilitated the expression of a shift in the Tokyo nuclear family structure in postwar Japan (Buckley, 2002). This article demonstrates how mai homu shugi was able to increase the acceptance of the notion that personal ownership and individualism need not obligatorily be deemed negative. At a larger discursive level, “my homeism” is a vibrant example of the ways in which language borrowing can enable interlocutors to coin new phrases for the purpose of verbalizing and fueling social change.

Mai homu shugi, or “my homeism,” is a Japanese linguistic phenomenon that originated in late-1960s Tokyo (Buckley 293 ). It served to increase the acceptance of the notion that personal ownership and individualism need not necessarily be viewed in a negative light and stressed the importance of the nuclear family unit as Tokyo began to expand and grow as a modern metropolis (Beer 43-44). As Henry D. Smith II discussed at length in “Tokyo as an Idea,” Tokyo underwent numerous changes during the postEdo period (Smith 46), and amidst rapid industrialization and a huge population increase (Linhart 271-2), the interpersonal

relationships that existed between its constituents were also subject to modification. Perhaps spawned from the pre-war perception of Tokyo as “a problem,” “escapism,” and “corruption and change” by nonurbanists and those from the countryside (Smith 50-71), post-war Tokyoites found strength in following Western influence in the late 1960s by making all concerns of the non-immediate family periphery and focusing on that which is of one’s direct family’s concern (Fraser 10). The phrase mai homu was coined in reference to one’s own home and the family members of which it is made, which began to emerge after a boom in housing purchases due to a widespread increase in income (Buckley

Gregory Bennett is a senior at Georgetown University majoring in Linguistics and minoring in Japanese.

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293).

possessor “my” and the object, “home”), function together as a normal Japanese This article will explore how mai homu language subject and object, take the shugi, “my homeism,” both expressed and proper subject and object marking particles, shaped the restructuring of Tokyo family and can be generated in perfectly gramlife in the late 1960s. While this article can- matical Japanese sentences. As seen in the not delve so deep into the larger economic, application of the “my” possessor to other political, and social effects of mai homu English-language nouns that have been shugi as to disambiguate its correlation with incorporated into the Japanese lexicon such contemporary issues in Japanese society, it as “pace” and “iPod,” constructions such will serve to shed light on its complexity as as mai peisu “my pace,” and mai aipoddo “my a linguistic phenomenon and address its key iPod” can be generated (Skelton and Allen role in the reshaping of Tokyo families as a 131). Here, we see the English-language smaller, nuclear unit (Kipnis 295-313). Like possessor “my” function morphologically as Andrew Kipnis in his examination of the an affix to these borrowed nouns, “home,” Chinese word suzhi, my exploration of “my “pace,” and “iPod,” such that it has the homeism” will discuss its linguistic propsame possessive meaning constructed as erties, the contexts in which it arose, and watashi no ie (lit. “my home”), watashi no its impact on the social underpinnings of mama de (lit. “by my way”) and watashi no Tokyo family life at the time. aipoddo (lit. “my iPod”) in Japanese (Spencer and Zwicky 19). Semantically, however, by Syntactically speaking, the Ameriusing the phrase mai homu, which was imcan English-language phrase “my home” ported into the Japanese grammar by way was incorporated into the Japanese lexiof English-language contact, the connotacon as two lexically separate entities: the tion (Saeed 120) of possession, selfishness, first person possessive “my,” which reand Western-ness can be felt (Lincoln and mains unchanged in all contexts, and a Kalleberg 63). given noun-phrase unit, most commonly, “home.” These two lexical entries retain As we have seen above, the incorpotheir English-language syntactic properration of this English-language phrase into ties as possessive phrasal units such as “my the Japanese grammar is a very intimate, home” and “my car” as they were inserted fluid merger of two syntactic and morphosmoothly into the Japanese grammar. In logical systems. This intimate form of lanshort, the English syntactic properties guage change by way of language contact remain such that these possessive phrases was most likely viewed by some in the late are never bifurcated (i.e. the Japanese pos1960s as an unwelcome change in attitude sessive particle is not inserted between the among what used to be a very socially 2011

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closed Japan. However, it is this penetrating use of language that served to illustrate and influence the changes occurring within the Tokyo family structure at the end of the 1960s. Geographically, mai homu shugi was born in the incredibly dense population of the metropolis, Tokyo. While some may argue that due to cities such as Nagasaki and Kobe having ports that would allow for more English-language contact by way of trade, because the majority of people immigrating from the countryside to the city moved to the capital, Tokyo, and the majority of Japanese-American politics and relations was conducted in Tokyo during the Korean War, it makes sense for JapaneseAmerican culture contact to have occurred at the largest level in Tokyo over all other Japanese cities (Allen 112). As shown at length in Morris-Suzuki’s “The Invention and Reinvention of “Japanese Culture,”” we can see that culture contact is largely the cause for societal changes (Morris-Suzuki 700). This could shed light on how incorporating an English-language phrase such as mai homu into the Japanese grammar served to describe the changes occurring within the typical Tokyo family in the late 1960s. The population density of Tokyo supports the notion that mai homu shugi was able to spread quickly as a new linguistic construct in Japanese, and it characterized the growing trend of Tokyo families focusing on its immediate members who lived in the household.

The tendency for Tokyo families to 18

focus their attention on the concerns of their direct family members in their household spawned from the economic boom in the 1950s and rise in income in the 1960s, whereby Tokyo residents who could afford to purchase their own living space increased in number (Buckley 293). This monetary affluence and the subsequent purchases of residences allowed for the sense of possession to be promulgated throughout Tokyo society as a new norm (Linhart). From this personalized view of one’s life at home, whereby buyers could feel a sense of ownership in their household and its constituents, the notion of making periphery all other issues that were not the concern of one’s immediate family began to take root. As this trend began to grow, the phrasal incorporation of mai homu into the Japanese grammar gave a sense of reality to the societal change; it expressed the foreignness of the concept of the nuclear family and solidified the notion as a tangible, increasingly popular way of thinking. In that way, mai homu shugi both demonstrated the changes taking place in the Tokyo family and influenced the popularization of the nuclear family among Tokyo households. From a sociolinguistic standpoint, mai homu shugi served to normalize the concept of possession in Japanese culture, beginning with the Tokyo family unit by way of possessive speech. It underscored the foreign quality of possession with respect to Japanese culture at the time and was perhaps coined for the sake of reflecting the restruc-

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turing of Tokyo families at large. The use of mai homu in speech both reflected this change and promulgated the concept to other Tokyo constituents at the same time. By choosing to use mai homu rather than speaking indirectly, Tokyo constituents were able to make the phrase popular, not only as a fresh, new expression of a change in Tokyo family life, but as a challenge to the social norms of the Tokyo family during the prewar and wartime eras (Grumperz 40).

the trend of how Tokyo families became nuclear units, as well as normalized the foreignness of possession and the nuclear family in the late 1960s, it cannot be said that the phrase itself caused this phenomenon to occur. As seen above, it was a combination of Japanese-American culture contact and the boom in housing purchases after the economic upturn of the 1950s that pushed Tokyo constituents to focus on those things that were of one’s immediate family’s concern. It can definitely be said, however, that the phrase mai homu served to estab By examining mai homu shugi from its lish the existence of the growing trend for sociolinguistic impact on discourse involvTokyo families to focus inward and allowed ing Tokyo family lifestyle, we can observe the concept to reach a multitude of Tokyo how the phrase mai homu both expressed constituents as they began to approach the and shaped the trend of making Tokyo cusp of social change in Tokyo family life families focused on their immediate memin the late 1960s. In contemporary Tokyo, bers. While it is certainly true that the the use of the phrase mai homu is certainly phrase itself did not cause the trend to less foreign than it was 40 years ago, and start, it helped to establish the social change naturally, the connotations of foreignness as a new, valid component to the Tokyo and deviance are not as strong as they once family lifestyle and allowed the concept to were. However, the phrase is still associreach a multitude of residents living in To- ated with a certain amount of western-ness, kyo as it began to take root in family culture emphasizes the notion of possession with during the late 1960s. By a given interlocu- respect to one’s household, and continues tor’s decision to use the phrase mai homu, he to reflect the concept of a nuclear Tokyo effectively described the phenomenon takfamily. As mentioned earlier in this article, ing place at the time as well as introduced it the mai affixation phenomenon has taken to his fellow interlocutor, thereby propagat- to other imported English-language words ing the idea of the Tokyo nuclear family. In such as “car” and “iPod,” and they continthis way, mai homu shugi both expressed and ue to be used among Japanese today. Howshaped this trend among Tokyo families in ever, more fieldwork and research is needed the late 1960s. to explore the connotations of the application of the mai affix to other imported While mai homu shugi certainly reflects English language words in contemporary 2011

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Japanese discourse.

of Japanese Studies. 14 (1988): 271-307.

References

Morris-Suzuki, Tessa. “The Invention and Reinvention of “Japanese Culture.”” The Journal of Asian Studies. 54.3 (1995): 759-780.

Allen, G. C. Japan’ s Economic Recovery. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958.

Perkins, Jack, Perf. Nippon: Japan Since 1945. A&E Premiers: 1990, Videocassette.

Beer, Lawrence W. “My Homeism” and Political Struggle.” Asian Survey. 10. (1969): 43-55.

Saeed, John I. Semantics. 3rd ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2009.

Buckley, Sandra. Encyclopedia of Contemporary Japanese Culture. New York: Routledge, 2002.

Skelton, Tracey, and Tim Allen. Culture and Global Change. London: Routledge, 2000.

Fraser, Angus M. “The Political Viability of the US Base System in Asia after a Vietnam Settlement.” Thesis. Arlington, VA: Institute for Defense Analyses, International and Social Studies Division, 1970.

Smith, Henry D. II. “Tokyo as an Idea: an Exploration of Japanese Urban Thought until 1945.” Journal of Japanese Studies. 4 (1978): 45-80.

Goffman, Erving. Encounters: Two Studies in the Sociology of Interaction. Indianapolis: BobbsMerrill, 1961. Gordon, Andrew. A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Spencer, Andrew, and Arnold M. Zwicky, ed. The Handbook of Morphology. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2001. Ussishkin, Adam, and Andrew Wedel. Neighborhood Density and the Root-Affix Distinction. Proceedings of NELS 32.1 (2002): 1-12.

Gumperz, J. J. Discourse Strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. Kipnis, Andrew. “Suzhi: a Keyword Approach.” The China Quarterly. 186 (2006) : 295313. Lincoln, James R., and Arne L. Kalleberg. Culture, Control and Commitment: A Study of Work Organization and Attitudes in the United States and Japan. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Linhart, Sepp. “From Industrial to Postindustrial Society: Changes in Japanese Leisure-Related Values and Behavior.” Journal

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Political Determinism: Comparison of the Public and Private Sectors in China and India Jiakun Jack Zhang and Adonica Black Abstract: State-owned enterprises, multi-national corporations, and joint ventures have dominated the Chinese economic landscape since the FDI intensive Opening and Reform. The Chinese party-state under the CCP has, until recently, favored FDI-driven growth, leveraging on the weakness of organized labor while holding on to a set of strategic enterprises. Deprived of state support and squeezed between domestic and multinational giants, few Chinese private enterprises can compete internationally. Indian economic reform began later and has proceeded haltingly. It has attracted a much smaller inflow of FDI than its Chinese counterpart. India’s democratic system retards the rate of reform and restricts labor law. While it is no match for China’s rate of growth at the macrolevel, India has managed to produce many more private enterprises that are competitive in the international market. A systematic comparison between the two countries reveals that their distinctive economic landscapes recapitulate fundamental differences in their political structures.

Introduction In their influential 2003 Foreign Policy article, Yasheng Huang and Tarun Khanna made the bold proposition that India’s economy could overtake China’s in the long term because its bottom up approach of reform creates better micro level conditions than China’s top down approach of state-driven economic liberalization. Though controversial at the time, this proposition no longer seems far-fetched. In recent years, the two systems seem to be converging: India has been attracting more foreign direct investment (FDI), while Chi-

na has been taking steps to encourage innovation in its private sector. China is trying to slow down its GDP growth even as India speeds up. Even as the two Asian giants move to adopt each other’s best practices, the dissimilarities between their two systems become even more apparent. The vast differences in Chinese and Indian economic landscapes may appear puzzling upon initial assessment. Both nations have undergone economic liberalization while having massive labor supply, planned economies, large bureaucracies, and a history of one party rule. Yet China has become the “world factory.” relying on

Jack Zhang is a Duke senior, Class of 2011, majoring in Political Science. Adonica Black is a Duke senior, majoring in International Comparative Studies. 2011

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FDI-fueled export-driven growth for rapid GDP growth. On the other hand, India’s reform and growth has been more gradual; it has become the “world office,” developing a very competitive IT sector and a vibrant private sector. A systematic comparison of the two economies reveals that the differences are rooted in differences in their political systems. The fundamental dissimilarities between the centralized authority of the CCP party-state in China and the multiparty democratic system in India explain much of the variation in respective state attitudes towards FDI, role of organized labor, and the balance of state-owned enterprises and the private sector. China I. The State’s Role in Economic Control The People’s Republic of China represents a developmental paradox. Politically, it remains an authoritarian state, but, economically, it has embraced the free market. Under Deng Xiaoping’s leadership, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) initiated process of reform and opening to unleash market forces in order to generate economic growth. In the 1980s, collective farming gave way to a “responsibility system,” which allowed farmers to profit from their surplus crops, and special economic zones (SEZs) were established to encourage foreign investment. Beginning in the early 22

1990s, the CCP began the painful process of State-owned enterprise (SOE) restructuring, ending state price control policies and protectionist regulations that shielded China’s inefficient SOEs from market competition. However, the state has retained control of so-called strategic enterprises and dominates key sectors of the economy. In 2003, the state directly accounted for 38% of Chinese GDP and employed 85 million people (Pei 2006). To sufficiently understand Chinese economy, therefore, it is essential to recognize the central role the state plays in economic affairs (Gao 2009). II. Economic Reform under One Party Rule China dealt with the pressure to reform through a three-pronged effort: FDI liberalization, SOE restructuring, and private industry development. Since FDI liberalization, China has received more FDI than any other developing countries (Gallagher 2005). It attracted FDI through policies such as the creation of SEZs and the lowering of export tariffs. Though these policies were controversial at the time, the concentration of power within the CCP ensured their steady implementation. FDI has spurred capitalism and competition, incentivized development, and sparked political reform to transform China’s markets into globally competitive ones (Gallagher 2005). This foreign sector of investment also provided the experimental grounds to test the reactions to labor reforms and company restructuring (Gallagher 2005). This

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was done with no direct consequence to the state, specifically SOEs. Finally, these FDI reforms prompted an ideological shift, transferring value from public ownership and control to value in national ownership.

tion Commission (SASAC), a specially commissioned group under the State Council charged with managing China’s SOEs, in 2003 marked a new phase of SOE reform. The founding of SASAC launched a process of redefining the relationship between Because these reforms to attract FDI the central government and the so-called happened before SOE restructuring, the “central enterprises” (zhongyang qiye), the SOEs complained of an unfair advantage key SOEs that have been selected by the enjoyed by multinational companies. SOEs government to form the basis from which could neither make autonomous decisions China’s future top global companies will be pertaining to worker retention and comcreated. Central enterprises account for the pensation nor could they escape the provibulk of SOE profits and around a quarsion of social welfare provision requireter of SOE corporate investment (Mattlin ments. The struggling SOEs were desperate 2007). The SASAC represents yet another for a way to motivate productivity and way that the Chinese state, particularly the efficiency in performance. Therefore, the central government, exerts its power in the central government implemented structural economic realm. reforms of the SOEs that liberalized these processes, leaving the enterprises with more III. The Public and the Private Sector autonomy to be competitive with multinational corporations. From 1979 to 1983, According to the SASAC, there are new features were implemented in the fol123 centrally owned companies within Chilowing ways: taxable profit (enterprises pay- na. The centrality of China’s SOEs leaves ing taxes rather than turning over all profa minor role for homegrown private comits to the state) and loans for fiscal grants panies. Strategic SOEs— such as telecom(turning government appropriations into munications, electricity, and railroads—are loans to improve efficiency). These changes particularly important to the CCP because were more efficient on two fronts—the they allow the party to have monopoly of government sinks less money into unprofit- power within the state. Additionally, SOE able ventures and the individual enterprises assets tied to these industries make up a increase their profit intake, thereby provid- large proportion within the Chinese maring an incentive for continued growth and ket, making these ventures a very important success (Lin and Zhu 2001). factor: The establishment of the Stateowned Assets Supervision and Administra2011

The 2nd National Economic Census conducted in 2008 reveals that of all the 208 trillion RMB

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total assets of the secondary and tertiary sectors, 63 trillion, about 30%, was held by SOEs. … Meanwhile, in terms of enterprise number, there were 154,000 SOEs at the end of 2008, only accounting for 3.1% of the total enterprise number… SOEs control a substantial part of total enterprise assets in China, despite the fact that their total number is marginal. (Xu 2010) While China has continued to privatize non-profitable SOEs and has encouraged competition among SOEs through restructuring, SOEs remain central to the Chinese economy. Though SOEs account for an ever smaller portion of China’s industrial output, they have become increasingly concentrated in large, capital-intensive firms that are important to the state not only economically but also politically. Many of the executives of the SOEs are party members and are appointed to their positions by the CCP through the tradition of nomenklatura. The rotation of SOE executives and government officials through party politics creates perverse incentives to stifle private sector competition. The precarious nature of one-party CCP rule meant that China has been far bolder with external reforms but has imposed substantial legal and regulatory constraints on indigenous, private firms. As Huang and Khanna’s study reveals that numerous Chinese entrepreneurs tried, and failed, to circumvent the restrictions placed on their activities to set up private firms. Some registered their firms as nomi24

nal SOEs (all the capital came from private sources, and the companies were privately managed) only to find themselves ensnared in title disputes when financially strapped government agencies sought to seize their assets (Huang and Khanna 2003). China faces competing priorities in its economic reform agenda; political pressures push the CCP to preserve certain SOEs, but economic pressures pull it down the path of private industry development. Though China’s political system has performed admirably in attracting FDI to fuel China’s economic reform, it has also inhibited the establishment of internationally competitive industries in the private sector. India I. Consociational Politics Unlike the centralized one-party state of China, multiparty pluralism and democratic elections characterize Indian politics. John Stuart Mill famously asserted that democracy is next to impossible in multiethnic societies and completely impossible in linguistically divided communities (Mill 1958). India flies in the face of this paradigm. Political scientists have puzzled over how India, with its deeply divided population, has managed to remain a majoritarian democracy since independence. Arend Lijphardt shed light on this puzzle by arguing that Indian democracy has demonstrated all the crucial elements of power sharing theory and represents a

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consociational system. (Lijphart 1996) A consociational system is characterized by (1) grand coalition governments that include representatives of all major linguistic and religious groups, (2) cultural autonomy of these groups, (3) proportionality in political representation, and (4) a minority veto with regard to vital minority rights (Lijphart 1996). Thus, though the Congress Party (and the Nehru-Gandhi family leadership) continues to dominate India’s political arena, the multi-party democratic process of Indian politics distinguishes it from the politics of one party rule under the CCP. Without having to win majority of popular votes in parliamentary elections, the Congress party has managed to remain in power consistently since independence by balancing the interests of various interest groups (Rudolph and Rudolph 1987). This illustrated that, although India’s associational life has proved too fragmented to agree or act on alternative national political doctrines that challenge Congress’s centrist consensus, Indian politics remain a dynamic and competitive multi-party system, characterized by high levels of social mobilization, a plethora of voluntary organizations, and conflicting sets of elite interests. This stands in stark contrast to the party-state politics of CCP-ruled China where there is a much more pronounced concentration of interest within the ranks of the CCP and no outside parties pose a viable threat to force the CPP to compromise its position. II. Economic Reform under a Pluralistic Democ2011

racy India’s democratic political order defined the process of economic reform just as one party rule shaped the development of China’s economic reform; logically, the two different political systems produced very different economic configurations. The Indian system necessitated compromise among divergent set of interests, and this impeded and compromised the process of economic reforms. Indian politics is dominated by coalition building amongst interest groups with divergent interests whereas Chinese politics under the CCP has been very centralized. Democratic politics also empower labor unions in India and foster local protectionism which hinder the inflow of FDI; these are challenges China did not have to tackle when it initiated reform in the 1979. India initiated reform much later than China; indeed, the impetus for largescale economic reform might not have ever materialized if not for a moment of crisis. In 1991, the Balance of Payments Crisis dismantled the License Raj and allowed for private sector competition against state monopolies. However, India has taken the gradualist approach to economic reform, a process that appears piecemeal and haphazard to the casual observer. In contrast to China, India pursued a policy of divestment rather than privatization (Ahluwalia 2002). Disinvestment allowed the state to retain managerial control while mobiliz-

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ing revenue for the budget. This policy had very limited success for disinvestment receipts were consistently below budget expectations (Ahluwalia 2002). Many economists have criticized the gradualist approach, complaining that the gradual process of privatization also increases the chances of favoritism to self interested and rent seeking politicians, bureaucrats, and labor unions (Ahluwalia 2002). III. The Economic Landscape of Post-Reform India The reforms of 1991 reduced the number of exclusive areas reserved for the public; by 2002, this list had been subsequently reduced to only three sectors: atomic energy, atomic minerals, and railway transport. Nevertheless, the fact that 246 enterprises remain in the ownership of India’s central government shows that reform has been slow. According to The Economist, “these companies employed almost 1.6m people in 2008 and accounted for 8.3% of the country’s GDP.” It is well established that the state-owned and mixed sectors of the Indian economy are significantly inefficient as compared to the private sector (Bhagwati 1993; Majumdar 1998), but due to entrenched local interest, the Indian state has been unable to proceed efficiently with SOE privatization. Thus, while the number of loss-making SOEs has fallen from 110 to 53 between 2001 and 2008, the scale of the losses has crept up again in recent years. As the number of state26

owned companies has held steady, countless private outfits have grown up, encroaching on their turf and liberating their customers. Yet, despite its efforts at reform and liberalization, India’s economy continues to lag behind that of China’s and faces significant challenges. Still, the success of the private sector is encouraged by the Indian government’s following projects: industrial de-licensing, protection of property rights, devaluation that had been implemented previously. This process has been slow, the central planners of economic reform are frustrated by local elites (Majumdar 1998). Small and medium scale companies still suffer from lack of finances and state barriers to expansion. Additionally the absence of a regulatory structure and infrastructure also hinder growth. The modern Indian economy excels in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector but lags behind China in manufacturing. Its economic landscape is shaped by local interests at the state level due to the legacy of licensing. A divergence in performance has taken place— firms in those states and sectors with the best institutions gaining, and those in the more tightly regulated states and sectors falling further behind. The need for further institutional reforms is urgent, focusing on product and labor market regulations at the central and state levels. However, these reforms have been slow to come due to India’s democratic politics, where the cen-

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trist Congress party consensus is increasingly challenged in recent years by political mobilization pressing for immediate and hard-to-fill demands, by the rise of religious fundamentalism and class or caste divisions, and the deinstitutionalization of the Congress party and state structure (Rudolph and Rudolph 1987).

ment has actually fallen. Unsurprisingly, private sector gains in India have arisen primarily in the unorganized and informal sectors of the economy, where productivity and wages are generally much lower than in the formal organized sector, where unions are entrenched. V. The Role of FDI

IV. Role of Labor Unions Due in part to the weakness of or Organized labor play a much more ganized labor in China, foreign investment active role in the Indian economy than and foreign firms played a much greater their Chinese counterparts. The number role in China’s economic development of unions grew considerably after indepen- than they did in India. As Huang Yashdence; in the early 1990s, total membership eng notes in Selling China, “foreign firms, rose to over 9 million. Many unions are either singly or as JVs with Chinese firms, affiliated with regional or national federahave established a ubiquitous presence in tions, the most important of which are the China”(Huang 2003). The inflow of FDI Indian National Trade Union Congress, has allowed the Chinese government to the All-India Trade Union Congress, the shift the political dynamic from a public vs. Centre of Indian Trade Unions, the Inprivate sector issue to a Chinese vs. foreign dian Workers’ Association, and the United issue, diverting attention from the painful Trade Union Congress (Heitzman 1995). process of SOE restructuring which rePoliticians have often been union leaders, sulted in massive job loss. In India, FDI has and some analysts believe that strikes and been a much less important part of export; other labor protests are carried out primar- today, FDI driven exports accounts for less ily to further the interests of political parties than 10% of India’s total. Chinese domesrather than to promote the interests of the tic firms lack the political clout available to work force (Heitzman 1995). Thus, labor their Indian counterparts because of nonunions also play a strong role in the reform democratic CCP one party rule; they could the Indian economy. Organized labor is an not protect themselves against competition important player in democratic coalition from the influx of foreign firms. However, building; thus, they have a distorting influstrong state control allowed China to deence in labor market regulation. It is only velop more business-oriented, FDI-friendly India’s organized sector that is subject to policies than India, where regulations labor market regulation, and here employ- caused excess bureaucracy (Wei 2005). Ac2011

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cording to the World Bank Group, it takes 90 days to start a new business in India compared to 30 days in China (Wei 2005).

change, the two states seem to be growing towards a point of convergence. China began with great inflows of FDI and little additional investment in SOEs and local, Conclusion private companies. India saw a lack in FDI and developed very insular private corpo India and China, the largest develop- rations. In recent years however, China is ing countries in the world, garner a great now more focused on encouraging research deal of attention individually and in comand development within its national corpoparison. The roles the two governments rations to further growth. India is welcomplay in private companies and state owned ing FDI as a way to improve many of the enterprises are very different mostly due structural deficits it faces in furthering its to the political differences between the two development. It remains to be seen what countries. These differences have motivated this second phase of reforms will do for fundamental changes in market participaeither country politically and economically. tion, creating each distinctive economic landscape that reflects a political structure. The Chinese party-state under the CCP has historically favored SOEs and foreign MNCs over domestic enterprises. Deprived of state support and squeezed between domestic and multinational giants, Chinaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s private sector has exhibited rapid growth (largely due to the weakness of organized labor) but few enterprises can compete internationally. On the contrary, Indiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s democratic system retards the rate of reform and restricts labor law. Indian economic reform began later and has proceeded haltingly, attracting a much smaller inflow of FDI than its Chinese counterpart. While it is no match for Chinaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s rate of growth at the macro level, India has managed to produce more private enterprises that are competitive on the international market.

As time continues and policies 28

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References

Ahluwalia, M. “Economic reforms in India since 1991: has gradualism worked?” The Journal of Economic Perspectives. 16.3 (2002): 67-88.

Majumdar, S. “Assessing comparative efficiency of the state-owned mixed and private sectors in Indian industry.” Public Choice. 96.1 (1998): 1-24. Pei, M. “The Dark Side of China’s Rise.” Foreign Policy. 153 (2006): 32-40.

Bhagwati, J. India in transition: freeing the economy. USA: Oxford University Press,1993. Rudolph, L. and S. Rudolph. In pursuit of Lakshmi: The political economy of the Indian Gallagher, M. Contagious capitalism: Globaliza- state. University of Chicago press, 1987. tion and the politics of labor in China. Princeton University Press, 2005. Wei, W. “China and India: Any difference in their FDI performances?” Journal of Asian Gao, B. “The Rubik’s Cube State: A ReEconomics 16.4 (2005): 719-736. conceptualization of Political Change in Contemporary China.” Research in the Sociol- Xu, G. “State-Owned Enterprises in Chiogy of Work. 19 (2009): 409-438. na: How Big are They?” World Bank. (2010). Huang, Y. Selling China: foreign direct investment during the reform era. Cambridge Univ Pr, 2003. Huang, Y. and T. Khanna. “Can India Overtake China?” Foreign Policy. 137 (2003): 74-81. Lijphart, A. “The puzzle of Indian democracy: A consociational interpretation.” American Political Science Review. 90.2 (1996): 258-268. Lin, Y. and T. Zhu. “Ownership restructuring in Chinese state industry: An analysis of evidence on initial organizational changes.” The China Quarterly. 166 (2001): 305-341.

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Cogs in the Culture Machine: Changing Producer-Audience Relationships in South Korean Popular Culture Amanda Ng

Abstract: In the South Korean pop culture scene, there exists a power relationship between a major South Ko-

rean entertainment company, SM Entertainment Corporation, and a particular fan club devoted to one of its idol groups. Through highly streamlined and rationalized corporate strategies, this company at first glance does seem to hold considerable ideological sway over the production of popular music and culture in South Korean society, functioning as part of the overbearing, ubiquitous menace to the creative individual that prominent sociologists Adorno and Horkheimer call the culture industry. However, as an analysis of the activities of fan clubs and SM’s interactions with them reveals, Adorno and Horkheimer’s negative portrayals of modern popular culture and the entertainment industry might be wholly unwarranted. In effect, weaknesses inherent in Adorno and Horkeimer’s scathing critiques of the culture industry and in the culture industry itself, as represented by SM, collectively call for a more optimistic view of popular cultural products and their effects on modern society.

The relationships between the producer, product, and audience have long been studied in the larger context of consumption practices and the social factors that affect them. In this paper, I will examine these relationships as articulated in the South Korean pop music industry to provide a check on Adorno and Horkheimer’s view of the culture industry as being an all-powerful, ubiquitous menace to the creative individual. First, I will briefly outline Adorno’s invectives of the culture industry and provide a brief overview of the South Korean pop culture industry. I argue that initially, through highly stream-

lined and rationalized corporate strategies, SM did hold considerable ideological sway over the production of popular music and culture. However, as I attempt to show in the second part of my paper, such a balance of power is undergoing a fundamental shift, as the corporate machine, which manufactures popular culture, is increasingly confronted and opposed by the users of its products. Through this study, I hope to gain insights into the nature of the pop music industry and the pop idol phenomenon in South Korean society, as well as to call into question Adorno and Horkheimer’s pessimistic conception of a society

Amanda Ng is a Sophomore at Williams College, planning to major in Economics and Asian Studies.

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dominated by the culture industry.

results in “the abolition of the individual”. By reducing individuals into customers and In “The Culture Industry: Enlightemployees, it renders humans as “absoenment as Mass Deception,” Adorno and lutely replaceable, pure nothingness” (Ibid Horkheimer present a clear stance regard117). From Adorno’s perspective, individuing the balance of power between produc- als are hopelessly disempowered and serve ers and consumers of cultural products. as mere material for those in control to use From Adorno’s perspective, the culture and manipulate to their sole benefit. Thus, industry is an oppressive and impenetrable he positions the culture industry as an inentity that works to homogenize culture. In domitable entity and leaves very little room a society where “something is provided for to consider consumer agency. everyone so that no one can escape,” the individual is effectively marginalized within Before going on to discuss the dythe economic structures imposed by the namics of a particular producer-audience dominant capitalist order (97). All decisions relationship in the South Korean music inregarding the production and classificadustry, some background information to the tion of cultural commodities are made by pop culture industry would help to situate corporate executives before any product that relationship in a larger historical and reaches store shelves or screens, leading social context. The origins of popular muconsumers to be passive and unquestionsic and a popular music industry in South ing of the status quo. Any perceived difKorea can be traced back to the 1920’s ferences within a type of popular culture during the period of Japanese occupation. product are superficial and are only there The term, yuhaengga, meaning “song in to provide the illusion of choice. With the fashion” was first used in 1926 when the commodification of music, consumers are song “Adoration of Death” became an imat no less of a disadvantage. Adorno views mensely popular hit (Hwang 35). From then consumers of popular culture as powerless on, as more people recognized the profits spectators whose passive intake of enterthat could be realized through a popular tainment commodities requires no thought song market, recording companies emerged on their part and only serves to perpetuto capitalize on the demand (Ibid). Initially, ate the dominance of certain corporate subsidiaries of foreign companies like Cointerests. He writes, “Entertainment is the lumbia and Victor produced the majority prolongation of work,” in that people seek of recordings of Korean popular songs, it as a relief from the daily grind of work, and it was not until the 1930’s that Koreanyet it only serves to compel them to work owned recording companies would appear more in order to retain their leisure hours. (Ibid). In the years after World War II and The work of the culture industry ultimately through the Korean War, America’s pres2011

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ence was felt in most parts of South Korean society, not least in the significant influx and widespread popularity of Western pop songs, which would come to have a lasting influence on domestic pop culture (Ibid 36). From the early 1960’s on, supported by the United States and Japan, South Korea embarked on an ambitious project of modernization in hopes to stimulate economic growth. Along with rapid industrial development from the early 1960’s on, the South Korean economy underwent a significant transformation to Western-style capitalism. During the 1960’s, the state began to see Western pop music as a corrupting influence on society and the rise of individualism promoted by globalization as potentially destabilizing, causing popular culture to be subject to strict censorship (Malingkay 50). When Chun Doo Hwan staged a military coup in 1979 and made himself head of state, he actively sought to control the media, shutting down commercial television stations and maintaining the practices of media censorship, effectively delimiting the kinds of music considered suitable for broadcast and airplay (Hwang 83). During the 1980’s the “star system” also emerged, wherein singers who were perceived to have the suitable qualities for TV presentation were selected through contests and by talent scouts (Ibid 84). After Chun Doo Hwan left office in 1987, anti-authoritarian activists succeeded in bringing democracy to Korea and the 1988 Olympics held in Seoul opened up Korea to a myriad of outside influences. As a result, state censorship 32

of many forms of cultural expression was eased significantly, and the music industry, which had been resting in a rather uncomfortable slumber, was reinvigorated (Russel 142). The 1990’s saw a marked growth in the domestic music industry, with most of the growth attributed to domestic pop music rather than foreign popular music. It was at the end of what has been a turbulent century in terms of Korean and South Korean history that the SM Entertainment Corporation emerged to become one of the leading manufacturers of pop culture. Officially founded by former singer and TV and radio host Lee Soo-Man in 1995, SM can trace its roots back to a small studio in Seoul in which Lee had first opened SM Studio in 1988 (Russel 152). After Lee nearly lost SM because of the drug scandal involving one of his first protégées in the mid-1990’s, he was determined not to expose himself to the same risks of laboriously promoting a new artist only to have them fail to deliver on his investments later on (Ibid). Lee set out to systematize his idol-making business. He modified and extended the scope of the “star system” which had emerged during the 1980’s to create his own system for training and developing young people into stars. After a student passed the audition process, they would be subject to training in a range of entertainment fields including singing, dancing, and acting (Ibid 153). The aspects of personality, character, and looks thus become just as important, if not

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more, than their ability to sing and dance, since any minor shortcomings in the latter areas would be made up for by the rigorous training process that all SM trainees had to undergo in order to debut under the SM label. Thus, Lee effectively rationalized and industrialized the process of developing an idol star. In his efforts to minimize risk, he molded his trainees with a series of standardized procedures, just as factory machines manipulate and shape raw material: as a result, he created standardized cultural products, which were roughly interchangeable and also disposable, since there were always more copies coming down the production line. This type of star-production system has since become a norm among the companies that dominate the Korean music industry, such as YG and JYP Entertainment. In 2005, producers estimated the average cost of grooming and launching a new artist to be around $400,000, including music and dance training, the stars’ costumes, cars, managers, and other expenses (Kim). Since its inception, the idol-making machine has changed little besides becoming further streamlined with the help of information technologies, which help to identify what kind of pop star is currently in demand. SM has since begun to hold global auditions annually, and has moved to merge with or buy out other media companies, including a DVD distributor, a karaoke machine distributor, a music video channel, new media platforms, and more (Russel 158).

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As a prime model of the rationalization and bureacratization that characterizes the modern production of culture in a capitalist framework, SM is an apt representation of the culture industry as characterized by Adorno. In his conception of a society where the “control of consumers is mediated by entertainment,” SM is a leading producer of pop culture products that serve to both pacify and suppress the masses. As Keith Negus writes on the nature of the Western pop music industry, corporate strategy “provides a means of rationalizing and ordering the activities of consumers and audiences (Negus 31). Record companies maintain extensive collections of consumer data, gathered from sources such as electronic monitoring of sales, consumer panels, and publications of industry-wide figures. They then utilize this data to develop and promote new stars and songs (Ibid 32). Under such corporate strategy, consumers are reduced to charts and graphs, which is another aspect of the culture industry that Adorno rails against. With its assembly-line method of churning out the next idol stars, SM is also responsible for infecting everything with the homogeneity that Adorno sees as detrimental to the creative individual. Although it attempts to differentiate its idol stars from each other, such as by marketing them as purveyors of different genres (TRAX is marketed as a rock band, while Dong Bang Shin Ki is marketed as an acappella group), it hardly hides the fact that all these idol stars are products of the standardized SM training

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process. Any differences between them are therefore fabricated and intended to delude consumers. In some ways, the manufacturing process does not even end at the idol’s debut. The company often controls what costumes they wear in performances, their casual clothing, and even the kind of car they will drive. SM has to constantly monitor, shape, and repackage its idols according to current fads. With its recent evolution from a music label into a full-fledged media conglomerate, SM seems to be moving further to homogenize the experience of popular culture as well. From Adorno’s perspective, the commodification of music that is carried out by large media corporations like SM only serves to “intensify the impoverishment of the aesthetic material so radically that the identity of all industrial cultural products...will triumph openly tomorrow” (Adorno and Horkheimer 95). In many ways, SM’s cultural clout seems to have exceeded that point. Nowadays, it is rare to find someone who is at least somewhat immersed in Korean pop culture and cannot trace SM’s idol groups back to SM. Videos and pictures showing idols during their auditions and pre-debut training are widely circulated online and can be found on Youtube. By extensively marketing the audition process, SM even presents the opportunity to be an SM trainee as something desirable. In being widely identified with the idol-making machine, SM’s cultural products already seem to be recognized for what they really are: the products of an industrial process that are mass-produced for 34

mass consumption. SM is in the business of actualizing Guy Debord’s concept of the spectacle. In the context of this corporate strategy, music plays a minor role in the success of its cultural products, although idols put out scores of music albums. As Debord writes, a spectacle is “the omnipresent celebration of a choice already made in the sphere of production, and the consummate result of that choice” (Debord 13). It is “a social relationship between people that is mediated by images” (Ibid 12). The dissemination and control of images is paramount in SM’s corporate strategy. Whether through music videos, magazine spreads, TV advertisements, or guest appearances on game shows, SM consistently manages to impose a pre-packaged, meticulously tailored image of their idol stars on their audiences. Because it establishes and maintains social relationships with its customers through images, SM can essentially hide the fact of an unequal power relationship between it and its customers. In accordance with Adorno’s characterization of the culture industry, Debord’s notion of the spectacle deemphasizes any notion of consumer agency, and individuals are depicted as powerless in the face of the spectacle and all the economic capital it embodies. Manufactured to be spectacles, the cultural products, which SM puts out in the form of cute boy bands and spunky girl groups, often become objects of fe-

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tishization, especially among South Korean youth, to the extent that consumers develop solid, verging on obsessive, loyalties to particular artists. These loyalties manifest themselves in the formation of large fan clubs, each self-proclaimed to be exclusively devoted to a certain product of the idolmaking machine. For the purposes of this study, I am only focusing on the fan club of Dong Bang Shin Ki, a boy band under the SM label, although many other SM idol groups, such as SHINee and Super Junior, have also gained significant followings since their debut. All five members of the popular boy band, Dong Bang Shin Ki (officially abbreviated by SM as TVXQ), are products of SM’s star system. Each member was individually scouted out through auditions and then subjected to training in singing, dancing, and acting in the years leading up to their debut. TVXQ debuted in 2003, performing their hit single “Hug” during a showcase featuring Britney Spears and BoA, another pop star under SM. Since the release of their first single, they have rapidly acquired an impressive fan base. The fan site devoted to them on the Daum website, a large online community, now boasts nearly 760,000 fan members, comfortably beating the second largest fan page by more than 300,000 members (TVXQ Daum Fan Cafe). A quick Google search easily turns up more TVXQ fan communities based in countries around the world, including Malaysia, Australia, the United 2011

Kingdom, and the United Arab Emirates. Despite geographical and linguistic barriers, all these various fan communities are self-consciously united under one name: Cassiopeia. In 2008, Cassiopeia made the Guinness Book of World Records for being the largest fan club of any artist, numbering at around 800,000 members, according to KBS, the state-owned television station. Members of Cassiopeia, known as Cassiopeians and Cassies, are mostly internally organized and managed on many different fan sites and forums. There is no single website that claims to unite all 800,000 plus Cassiopeians within its servers, although the Daum fan cafe certainly comes close to it. These online gathering spaces for fans often demonstrate an impressive level of organization. The Daum fan site, for example, is housed in a neatly organized webpage, on which each member’s picture, date of birth, height, weight, and blood type are listed. In order to be a member, you must fill out the application and be accepted. Members of the fan site are organized hierarchically. Depending on various factors, such as the frequency with which you post and the nature of your posts, the president of the cafe can choose to upgrade your status within the club. The current president of the Daum fan cafe goes by the screen name of Cha-Jun. A series of tabs and links on the left side of the page direct you to the various divisions of the cafe. There is a forum where the daily schedules of each of the members are listed

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and another one about news of the members’ activities outside Korea. Pictures and cuts from television dramas are also provided and organized by members of the fan page. Another TVXQ fan site, CassiopeiaFamily, exhibits a similar structure of organization. Each of its nearly 14,000 members is given a rank based on the number of posts they have contributed. The rankings range from Dust (0 posts) to Red Giant (300 posts) to Cassiopeia (4000 posts). The structure of these rankings are detailed in a thread named “CSSPF Laws,” which was posted by the founder of the site to provide a comprehensive list of guidelines to govern the behaviors of members on the site (Cassipopeia family forum). These rules range from dealing with etiquette issues, such as the use of vulgar language and personal attacks, to stipulating the dimensions of avatar and banner images. Through their large numbers and sound organizational methods, Cassiopeians are able to carry out many of the promotional activities that normally would be left to SM and its marketing department. One forum of the Daum fan cafe organizes members to vote together on weekly music shows as well as international polls where TVXQ is featured, helping to increase TVXQ’s visibility at home and abroad. When Ellen DeGeneres uploaded a blog post on “The Ellen DeGeneres’ Show” website asking for international music suggestions, comments from Cassiopeians flooded the site recommending their favor36

ite idol group (Allkpop). Cassiopeians also work to disseminate the images of TVXQ to a wider audience. In addition to providing pictures and clips on fan sites, Cassiopeians also add subtitles to many of TVXQ’s videos on Youtube. Whereas the official music video of “Mirotic” that is provided on SM’s official channel is only in Korean, further searching turns up versions with subtitles in English, Spanish, Thai, Chinese, and French. The noticeable group presence that they exert wherever they go helps to increase TVXQ’s presence in online discussions about Korean pop music. On Soompi.com, one of the largest Englishlanguage online communities dedicated to Korean pop culture, there are a total of five threads devoted to TVXQ while most other groups only have one. Cassiopeians also create avatars and banners using their favorite members of TVXQ and use these on other non-TVXQ forums, such as Soompi.com, as proclamations of their loyalties as well as advertisements for their idols. Cassiopeians have also helped improve the images of their favorite members. Last year, Cassiopeians donated a large sum of money under the name of Xiah Junsu (a TVXQ member) to Adra Korea, an international development and relief agency, to help them rebuild a small village in Cambodia. In gratitude, villagers named it Xiah Junsu Village (Allkpop). Adorno would see these Cassiopeians as a deluded mass and as the victims of an oppressive manifestation of the culture

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industry. However, the limits to his argument are already becoming apparent. In his scathing portrayal of the culture industry, Adorno does not consider the possibility that audiences have the power to manipulate the images of cultural products. By donating to charity in Junsu’s name and improving TVXQ’s image in the process, Cassiopeians are demonstrating that it is possible for them to shape the cultural influences of their idols. In his outline of Lisa Lewis’ insights from her studies on fans and their activities at public events, Keith Negus writes, “fans create communities with a collective shared sense of identity,” and they are able to “contribute directly to the meanings attributed to performers” (Negus 26). Thus, through their impressive presence, Cassiopeians are able to influence how others understand and experience TVXQ and Korean pop culture in general. One of the major scandals that came out of the Korean pop music industry in 2008 involved unruly fan behavior at the “I Love Korea 2008 Dream Concert.” According to several online forums, when it came time for Girls’ Generation, an all-female idol group under SM, to perform, other fan groups, including Cassiopeians, banded together and gave them the silent treatment. Physical violence also allegedly erupted between the fan groups of different SM idol groups. Whether or not these events are exaggerated or even happened at all, the news provoked a flood of responses on web forums. On the thread devoted to this scandal on AsianFanatics.net, many forum 2011

members expressed their horror, disbelief, and disapproval (Asian Fanatics Forum). The user ‘marmar’ writes, “what the ppl in charge of the dream concert should do for next year should just banned all sm artists for just next year. since it’s mainly there fanclubs that are immature. don’t ruin it for the other artists that would like to perform for there fans...if they do need to invite an sm artist then invite one where there fans are not as immature & crazy like the soshi heads, elfs & cassies...” Another user, ‘hippocathy88,’ adds, “i cant really see anything hostile from them lol but what they did were so immature. such bad reputation for sm fans.” These forum posts demonstrate how the actions of fan groups like Cassiopeia are taken to reflect the general nature of fans of SM’s idol groups. The image of SM thus becomes inextricably linked to and shaped by the behavior of the consumers of its products, and thus SM’s cultural influence can no longer be considered a monopoly. That most of the groups involved in the conflict were fan clubs of SM idol groups only adds to the irony of the situation. More importantly, these fans do not at all resemble Adorno’s characterization of the passive and thoughtless consumer. Another area where Adorno’s argument falls short is that for all the concern he shows for the individual, he also deindividualizes consumers and treats them as a homogenous mass. From Adorno’s perspective, the utility of a cultural product is destroyed as it is consumed. Michel De

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Certeau, on the contrary, views consumption as a form of production, in which consumers use the cultural products that are imposed on them to further their own interests. De Certeau argues that “the imposed knowledge and symbolisms become objects manipulated by practitioners who have not produced them” (De Ceteau 32). A tour through a Cassiopeia forum will serve to substantiate his claims. On the forum Cassiopeia-Family, besides the usual personal blurbs, all members divulge their favorite member and favorite couple within TVXQ underneath their avatar. In fact, during registration, I had to provide my favorite member and my favorite couple. Although the TVXQ images that SM puts out rarely have any homosexual insinuations (most TVXQ music videos involve a female love interest), it has been very common for fans to portray pairs of members as romantic partners. On the Cassiopeia-Family forum, we thus find a salient example of SM’s cultural products being vastly reinterpreted to pursue interests and desires divergent from that of the dominant capitalist order. These reinterpretations also serve to distinguish Cassiopeians from each other and reflect the variety of personal preferences within the TVXQ fan community. The forum also features a large collection of fan fiction written by fans, in which they use the members of TVXQ as characters in their own original stories. In the fan fiction ‘Salvation of Love’, the author reimagines Jaejoong as a vampire and recasts Yunho as his lover, clearly straying from the images 38

that SM seeks to spread of its idols. These authors literally “select fragments [being] taken from the vast ensembles of production in order to compose new stories with them” (Ibid 35) effectively using SM’s cultural products to pursue individual interests and desires which are reflected in the stories they write. Thus, the culture industry is not without its virtues. It provides the material with which consumers can use to fulfill certain individual interests. As Dick Hebdige writes, “All aspects of culture possess a semiotic value, and the most taken-forgranted phenomena can function as signs: as elements in communication systems....” Corporate giants such as SM provide a common ideological space in which subordinate groups are able to function and interact. Cassiopeians are only able to use the images of their idols to fulfill their personal interests and share their reinterpretations with other fans because there is a corporation like SM to produce those idols and build a fanbase for them. Thus, the culture industry might serve a social function by providing a common language of signs that audiences can creatively manipulate and practice what John Fiske terms “textual productivity,” as cited in Bertha Chin’s work on East Asian cinema fandom (Chin 212). Recent high profile events involving Cassiopeia and SM seem to further challenge the validity of Adorno’s threaten-

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ing characterization of the culture industry. On July 31, 2009, three members of TVXQ filed an application at the Seoul Central District Court for provisional disposition to terminate their contract with SM Entertainment. Within the month, Cassiopeians mobilized a boycott of SM products. In a lengthy official statement, they detailed their main reasons: “1) SM Entertainment’s own decision of cancelling SM TOWN LIVE ‘09 that ridiculed the consumers 2) The insincerity and neglect that SM Entertainment showed for years to consumers’ complaints, and 3) SM Entertainment’s unfair treatment of TVXQ that caused a great danger [to] TVXQ’s existence” (Nuel92’s blog). On August 28, Cassiopeians submitted a petition of 121,083 signatures to the Korean Human Rights Commission to defend the human rights of their idols (Allkpop). Through their actions and their stated reasons, Cassiopeians clearly demonstrate how they think the producer-consumer relation should be. They hold SM responsible for not providing the cultural products it promised and believe that SM should be aware and responsive to the needs and opinions of consumers, needs and opinions which diverge enough from the dominant ideology to be called ‘complaints.’ These Cassiopeians thus demonstrate a capacity for consumer agency that Adorno does not consider them to be capable of. The third and last reason provided for the boycott in the official statement also shows that their ultimate loyalty rests with their idols and not with SM. 2011

They conclude their lengthy statement with a proclamation of their everlasting loyalty: “We always support TVXQ. Please always keep the faith! =).” The fact that Cassiopeians’ loyalties are firmly anchored to their idols rather than to SM points to an inherent weakness in the culture industry. Being in the business of manufacturing human spectacles, SM encourages the consumer to develop strong attachments to the cultural product while simultaneously distancing itself from it. In Bertha Chin’s summary of Christine Yano’s work on fan cultures, she writes that “this sense of intimacy is centered on the fan relationship to the star rather than a specific cultural text or event” (Chin 213). At the same time, the nature of the spectacle involves distorting SM’s role as the producer. The typical producer-consumer relationship is obscured by the images which mediate it to the extent that in the minds of audiences the images themselves come to take precedence over the entities which produced them. SM is increasingly seen as a separate entity from its cultural products, and the two are perceived to have divergent interests, as exhibited by the Cassiopeian efforts to defend the rights of their idols against the transgressions of SM. These intimate idol-fan relationships come to take precedence over the relationship that Cassiopeians have with SM. When an event arises where fans have to make a choice between their idols and SM, the choice is clear. Hence, SM, and the culture

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industry in general, can be said to be at a References natural disadvantage precisely because their Adorno, T. and Max Horkheimer. “The Culture Induscultural hegemony is sustained by the protry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception (1944).” Dialectic duction of spectacles. of Enlightenment. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Adorno’s impassioned critique of the culture industry thus seems to overlook the very thing he is trying to defend. While he mourns the loss of the individual, he ignores the capacity of the individual to exercise their creativity and agency within the economic structures imposed by the dominant capitalist order. Consumers, as per the perspectives of De Certeau and Hebdige, retain much of their creative potential despite the cultural hegemony of giant entertainment corporations like SM. The many practices carried out by Cassiopeians serve to attest to the productivity that audiences are capable of, as well as to their ability to confront and challenge those in power. Another way to view the role of the culture industry is that it provides a common context in which audiences can interact and be textually productive. Such a notion suggests that it may have some redeeming qualities that Adorno does not acknowledge. This study also reveals a fundamental weakness of the culture industry which lies in its production of spectacles. By putting forward some of the weaknesses of both Adorno’s critique and the culture industry, I hope to lend some optimism to the gloomy view that Adorno presents of modern popular culture.

Press, 2002. mashimello. “Cassies Voice Their Support for TVXQ to Ellen DeGeneres.” Allkpop. 23 Jan 2010. Web. 19 Apr 2011. <http://www.allkpop.com/2010/01/cassiesvoice-their-support-for-tvxq-to-ellen-degeneres. >. The¬_Lost_City. “TVXQ Fans Are Very Persistent.” Allkpop. 29 Aug 2009. <http://www.allkpop. com/2009/08/tvxq_fans_are_very_persistant>. mashimello. “Welcome to Xiah Junsu Village!” Allkpop. 4 Dec 2009. Web. 16 Dec 2010. <http://www.allkpop. com/2009/12/welcome_to_xiah_junsu_village>. “SNSD Boycotted During 2008 Dream Concert.” Asian Fanatics Forum. <http://asianfanatics.net/forum/ topic/549151-snsd-boycotted-during-2008-dreamconcert/>. “[IMPORTANT] CSSPF Laws.” Cassiopeia-Family Forum. <http://www.cassiopeia-family.com/forums/ viewtopic.php?f=2&t=15>. “[ONESHOT] Salvation of Love.” Cassiopeia-Family Forum. <http://www.cassiopeia-family.com/forums/ viewtopic.php?f=93&t=15854&hilit=vampire+yunho& sid=5cce805c03d1c42f1cae43b43df913fe>. Chin, Bertha. “Beyond Kung-Fu and Violence: Locating East Asian Cinema Fandom.” Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World. Ed. Jonathan Gray, C. Lee Harrington, and Cornel Sandvoss. New York: New York University Press, 2007. “Never Ending TVXQ: Yuraebi.” TVXQ Daum Fan Café. <http://cafe.daum.net/soul48>. Debord, G. Society of the Spectacle. NY: Zone Books, 1994. De Certeau, M. The Practice of Everyday Life. University

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Howard, Keith. “Coming of Age: Korean Pop in the 1990’s.” In Korean Pop Music: Riding the Wave. Ed. Keith Howard. United Kingdom: Global Oriental Ltd, 2006. Hwang, Okon. “The Ascent and Politicization of Pop Music in Korea: From the 1960’s to the 1980’s.” Korean Pop Music: Riding the Wave. Ed. Keith Howard. United Kingdom: Global Oriental Ltd, 2006.

Willoughby, Heather A. “Image is Everything: The Marketing of Femininity in South Korean Popular Music.” Korean Pop Music: Riding the Wave. Ed. Keith Howard. United Kingdom: Global Oriental Ltd, 2006. 99-108.

Jung, Eun-Young. “Articulating Korean Youth Culture through Global Popular Music Styles: Seo-Taiji’s Use of Rap and Metal.” Korean Pop Music: Riding the Wave. Ed. Keith Howard. United Kingdom: Global Oriental Ltd, 2006. Kim, Yeoshin. “Show Me the Money: Are Popstars Underpaid?” TIMEasia. Web. 16 Dec 2010. <http:// www.time.com/time/asia/covers/1101020729/money. html>. Lee, Hyo-Won. “TVXQ Feuds With SM Entertainment.” The Korea Times. 2 Aug 2009. Web. 16 Dec 2010. <http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/ www/news/art/2010/11/143_49459.html>. Maliangkay, Roald. “Pop For Progress: Censorship and South Korea’s Propaganda Songs.” Korean Pop Music: Riding the Wave. Ed. Keith Howard. United Kingdom: Global Oriental Ltd, 2006. Negus, Keith. Music Genres and Corporate Cultures. New York: Routledge, 1999. Negus, Keith. Popular Music in Theory. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1996. Nuel92. “Cassiopeia puts pressure on SMEnt with boycott, “We refuse to be the must-buyer of the products from SMEnt.”” Web. 16 Dec 2010. <http://nuel92. wordpress.com/2009/08/14/cassiopeia-puts-pressureon-sment-with-boycott-%E2%80%9Cwe-refuseto-be-the-must-buyer-of-the-products-from-sment2011

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The Emergence of a Superpower: China’s UN Policies from 1971 to Present Della Fok Abstract: As China has grown more confident in its role in the international sphere through the years, it has become more assertive in pursuing its strategic and foreign policy goals as evidenced by its performance in the UN over time. Like all states, China has sought to use the United Nations as a forum for projecting its foreign policy, and its objectives can be thematically categorized as (1) advancing its reputation in the international community, (2) enhancing its national security, and (3) seeking solidarity with the developing world so as to avoid isolation in the international community. The underlying motivation for this change has been China’s desire to be seen as a partner, global stakeholder, and eventual leader in the UN and international community. Through an examination of its use of abstentions and vetoes, discussion of how these reflect China’s overall strategy, and a case study analysis of China’s involvement with the issue of Sudan, this article analyzes how China’s role in the UN has changed from that of a passive one to an active one.

In today’s increasingly globalized world, China’s role as an international superpower is a topic of constant discussion as the country continues to define itself within the complicated realities of current geopolitical structures. In addition to its growing importance in the global economy, China’s identity as a superpower is rooted in its increasing political power in the world theater. Although the exact advent of China as a global political force is debatable, its potential power on a global scale certainly came to the fore in 1971 when the People Republic of China’s assumed China’s seat in the United Nations. Since then, China’s role in the UN has changed from that of a passive one to an active one, and I will argue that as China has grown more con-

fident in its role in the international sphere throughout the years, it has become more assertive in pursuing its strategic and foreign policy goals, as evidenced by its performance in the UN. Like all states, China has sought to use the United Nations as a forum for projecting its foreign policy and achieving its national interests. This was especially apparent in its early years, during which time China’s objectives were (1) to advance its reputation in the international community, (2) to enhance its national security, and (3) to seek solidarity with the developing world so as to avoid isolation in the international community. These three themes have been consistent throughout China’s track record in the UN and have continued to mark its involvement and per-

Della Fok is a senior at Yale University double majoring in Political Science and East Asian Studies.

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formance in the UN up to the present day, though with notable changes from a passive to a more active approach. The underlying motivation for this change has been China’s desire to be seen as a leader in the UN and the international community.

From 1949 until 1971, the issue of representation was at the center of the PRC’s UN agenda. The legal status of China’s UN representation by the Nationalist delegation was first questioned in 1949, when the PRC assumed control of the Mainland and the Foreign Minister Historical Overview of the People’s Republic of China sent a letter to the President of the General As An understanding of the context of sembly. This challenge was then supported Beijing’s complex entrance into the UN is by the Soviet Union’s representative to the necessary before analyzing China’s parSecurity Council who also challenged the ticipation in the United Nations. In 1945 Nationalist government’s claim to repreduring the founding of the UN, China was sent the Chinese people. China’s contested one of the five permanent members of the representation from 1949 to 1971 can be Security Council after it ratified the Charunderstood as three stages. First, there ter alongside France, Soviet Union, the were substantive discussions in 1950, durUnited Kingdom, and the United States. At ing which the General Assembly and the this time, China was governed by Chiang Security Council dealt directly with speKai-Shek’s Nationalist government as the cific reference to the China participation Republic of China (ROC). However, short- and recognition issue. From 1951 to 1960, ly after the Chinese Civil War was won by known as the moratorium period, the GenMao Zedong’s Communist Party in 1949, eral Assembly, under the influence of the the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was U.S. and its allies, postponed consideration founded, and Chiang’s Nationalist govern- of the China question by rejecting proposment was forced to retreat to Taiwan. Since als to include the discussion onto the official “China” itself was an original Permanent agenda. Using these procedural maneuvers, Member of the UN Security Council, the the U.S. led a campaign to block the PRC’s question was not one of admission, but one UN recognition as part of its menu of of deciding which “China” – Taipei’s Reitems used to contain Chinese Communism public of China or Beijing’s People’s Reexpansionism. Substantive discussion then public of China – would represent China began in 1961 when China’s case was first in the UN. The two parties’ simultaneous included in the official agenda. The quesclaims to China’s UN seat defined the tion was then considered and debated, with 22-year representation issues that marked U.S.-backed Taipei slowly losing ground to China’s first phase of UN involvement. Beijing over the 10 years until 1971 when Beijing was recognized and Taipei removed 2011

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as China’s representative in the UN. Because this resolution was on an issue of credentials rather than one of membership, it was possible to bypass the Security Council where the United States and the ROC could have used their vetoes. From 1950 to 1955, the Soviet Union was China’s most active supporter due to the two countries’ Communist connections, and from 1955 until the Sino-Indian border conflicts of 1960, India was also China’s advocate. However, as Sino-Soviet relations worsened over the course of the 1950s and further deteriorated in the 1960s, Albania and Cambodia introduced draft legislation on China’s behalf in 1965, and in 1966, eleven countries submitted a proposal to seat the PRC: Albania, Algeria, Cambodia, Congo, Cuba, Guinea, Mauritania, Mali, Pakistan, Romania, and Syria.

tions.” The PRC, with the support of the newly-recognized developing countries in the General Assembly, was finally granted China’s seat in the UN, and Beijing would not forget these roots.

Analysis of Abstention Strategy China’s track record of abstentions has led many to describe China’s UN participation as that of a “non-participant” policy. China’s non-participation and use of abstentions stems from a historical ideological aversion to interfering in the domestic affairs of countries or undermining their sovereignty and territorial integrity in addition to its own aversion to taking a firm stand on issues. Since Beijing’s ascension to the UN in 1971, China has used its veto power very sparingly, instead opting for non-participation in voting in the 1970s The eventual seating of Beijing in and abstentions in the 1980s. Although it 1971, marked the first major defeat of the no longer employs a strategy of passive U.S. in the General Assembly and also non-participation and has a much more signified the emergence of developing active role in UN activity as compared to its countries with China emerging as the “self- early years, Beijing still retains abstentions appointed champion of the new actions as a key part of its UN strategy. By abstaininitiated by the Third World”. The turning ing, Beijing has been able to send a message point occurred on October 25, 1971, ten and yet avoid the necessity of taking sides years after General Assembly discussion be- and alienating allies. gan on the China question. United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2758 passed China’s justifications for its non-parwith 76 votes in favor, 35 against, and 17 ticipation and abstentions have remained abstentions, and declared “that the reprefairly consistent over time. As mentioned sentatives of the Government of the Peoearlier, China considers sovereignty and terple’s Republic of China are the only lawful ritorial integrity to be its banner issues and representatives of China to the United Na- dislikes interfering in what it considers to 44

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Another factor for China’s passivity during then 1970s was its relationship with the developing world. Beijing was aware of the support it received from developing nations during its 21-year struggle to claim China’s UN seat prior to 1971. To the PRC, this proved that its efforts in supporting decolonization had paid off politically. As the only developing country on the Permanent-Five Security Council, China felt that it had both a responsibility and an advantage in protecting the interests During the 1970s, China created and of developing nations. In 1974, Mao Zeconsistently used a policy of non-participadong outlined the “Three-World Theory” tion in the Security Council voting process. and Deng Xiaoping, the Vice Premier at Of the 101 resolutions adopted by the Sethe time, further outlined this theory at the curity Council between November 24, 1971 Special Session of the UN General Assemand December 22, 1976, China posted a 39 bly of that same year. As succinctly noted percent rate of abstention and non-particiby Yeshi Choedon, “China identified itself pation. Beijing was especially apprehensive with the Third World.” As such, China had about the legitimacy of UN peacekeeping an additional interest in using sovereignty operations and opposed such actions for and non-intervention as reasons for sitting ideological reasons. First, China viewed out on UN activity. such UN peacekeeping as a means for the U.S. and the Soviet Union to play out their However, despite this aversion to UN power struggle, and Beijing disagreed with activity and participation, China’s inactivity both Washington and Moscow. Second, did not translate to vetoes against peacestate sovereignty and non-intervention were keeping operations. In response to the U.S. of utmost importance to China, especially and Soviet Union’s power struggle, China in light of its own domestic situation with did not want to appear to take sides and the continued Taiwan problem. This comwas unwilling to take its commitment to mitment to non-intervention is seen in sovereignty and non-intervention to a level China’s track record throughout the years, where its newly-recognized international but especially during its first few years in reputation would be put on the line and on the UN, ideological issues played a major the record. Perhaps even more importantly, role in Beijing’s avoidance of UN participaChina did not want to appear obstructiontion. ist to either Washington or Moscow, or be the domestic affairs of other countries. Beijing has been especially sensitive to sanctions and use of force under the UN name, particularly when its own interests are at stake. However, because it does not want to be labeled as an obstructionist or stand in opposition to the West – particularly the United States and its allies – Beijing has never voted against the imposition of sanctions or the use of force.

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even relevant Third World countries who had interest in seeing such resolutions pass. As a result, China started its practice of non-participation: being present during the Security Council voting process but not voting. Thus, Beijing chose not to participate in or was absent from the vote on almost every UN peacekeeping operation during the 1970s. This attitude changed with the adjustment of China’s foreign policy in the early 1980s, and China began participating in UNSC voting. Though most votes were actually abstentions, this was still a move towards a more participatory approach. During this period, China’s increased interactions on both bilateral and multilateral levels, particularly its newly normalized relations with the U.S. as marked by President Richard Nixon’s 1979 visit to China, helped Beijing to realize the importance and potential of the UN as a platform to slowly increase its activity and presence in the international community. Also during this time, Deng Xiaoping began rolling out his Reform and Opening Up policies. New leadership gave higher credence to engaging in international cooperation and multilateral diplomacy. This new international and domestic environment caused Beijing to re-evaluate its approach to the UN and led to its adjusted voting behavior in the 1980’s. However, China’s concern for sovereignty and non-intervention still ranked high among its issues with UN involvement, and China maintained a rather passive ap46

proach in the 1980’s. Up to this point, China’s position in the UN was one of consistent passivity, frequently abstaining from resolutions that would interfere with what it considered a country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. However, starting in the late 1980s into the 1990s, China began to take steps toward more active participation in UN activities, particularly peacekeeping. Between 1988 and 1998, 36 UNPKO were established, and China voted in favor of all missions that carried out traditional peacekeeping tasks and those that were continuations of traditional missions established during the Cold War era. However, it still chose to abstain from new peace enforcement missions with the exception of voting in favor of the United Nations Operations in Somalia II. Between 1990 and 1999 China abstained 41 times when contentious issues, like the use of force, humanitarian intervention, and the establishment of international criminal tribunals, were at the negotiating table. Between 1992 and 1996, China voted in favor of a resolution authorizing the use of force seven times and abstained seven times. China maintained its commitment to sovereignty and non-intervention concerns, but allowed itself flexibility to make decisions dependent on the situation at hand. This can be seen in two of its decisions during the 1990s – Iraq and Cambodia. Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 led

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to Resolution 678, the UNSC’s first peace enforcement action. Beijing disagreed with Iraq’s invasion, but did not want to vote for a U.S.-led coalition attack due to its historical apprehensions about use of force. However, this occurred on the tails of the PRC’s near-universal condemnation for the Tiananmen Incident of 1989, and Beijing was anxious to regain its reputation and credibility within the international community. Thus, China relied on its tried and true tactic of abstention to allow the vote to past, and its cooperation with the West – or at least its lack of obstruction to U.S. leadership – was viewed favorably, thus putting Beijing back on track to be seen as part of the international community. Cambodia in 1991 was an easier decision for China. In the aftermath of decades of civil war in Cambodia, China joined the rest of the Security Council’s vote for Resolution 745. This established the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC), the UN’s first mission that involved taking over the administration of an independent state, organizing and running elections and overseeing human rights at a national level. China was eager to improve its international image and viewed Cambodia as a relatively straightforward and safe mission that Beijing felt comfortable supporting along its foreign policy goals of increased engagement with its Asian neighbors. As such, China sent 800 PLA engineering troops to UNTAC, marking the first time it contrib2011

uted military troops for a UNPKO. Over the course of the decade, China also sent 437 military observers on five peacekeeping operations. Thus, we see the beginnings of a flexible policy where Beijing has been more willing to change its historical policy of abstention and act in cooperation with other UNSC members based on both the particular situation and the stakes China itself stands to gain or lose from the international community. Analysis of Veto Strategy Despite these cautious steps towards activism, China is still sensitive to precedents that international peacekeeping could set for its domestic situation. Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations, use of force, and intervention remain key points of concern for China. In order for Beijing to support any form of international intervention, three requirements must be in place: there must be UN authorization, the resolution must “respect sovereignty,” and action must be at the invitation of the target state. When China feels that such conditions are not met and does not want to support such a measure, its two options are to abstain or veto. China often chooses to abstain when it does not want to take a stand and when it disagrees with the policy – for example, Iraq in 1990 – yet does not want to go against countries such as the U.S. who wish to see the resolution through.

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again shows that China was uncomfortable The second option – the veto – is with Bangladesh being denied admission much more rarely used by China, having solely because of Beijing’s veto, which did occurred only six times since Beijing asnot even represent its own interests. From sumed China’s UN seat in 1971. China then on, Beijing was much more careful in will veto a resolution only if it disagrees deciding how to use its veto and even its strongly enough to take a firm stand against vote. This experience evolved into the stratother members of the Permanent-Five and egies of nonvoting and abstention we obstop the resolution from passing. Otherwise, served earlier. This more passive approach Beijing usually expresses its disapproval via was one China was much more comfortabstention. These six vetoes can be loosely able with, since it allowed the Chinese to categorized into: (1) vetoes directly related send a message but avoided the necessity of to its own national sovereignty, most noalienating allies, taking sides, and assuming tably issues related to the recognition of responsibility. Taiwan; and (2) vetoes alongside the former Soviet Union and its successor state Russia, China’s other two deciding vetoes most notably on issues of sovereignty and were regarding the ceasefire in Guatemala intervention. in 1997 and the extension of UN observers to Macedonia in 1999, both of which Of the six resolutions Beijing has were vetoed because of the two countries’ vetoed, only three have been resolutions on recognition of Taiwan, which China conwhich China was the sole veto, meaning siders to be a nonnegotiable threat to its that China’s active negative vote effectively own sovereignty. After China’s veto against prevented the resolution from passing. The Guatemala on January 10, it lifted its veto other three would have failed regardless of ten days later to allow peacekeeping troops China’s veto since the Soviet Union (Russia) into Guatemala after bilateral discussions also vetoed the measure. Beijing’s first veto that resulted in “a settlement to the dispute came in 1972, one year after its inclusion with Guatemala that had led to the veto.” into the UN system. China vetoed the adIn other words, Guatemala discontinued its mission of Bangladesh into the UN because diplomatic ties with Taiwan, and the Maceit had an alliance with Pakistan, from which donia situation in 1997 played out similarly. Bangladesh sought independence. This vote is unique in China’s voting record, as the With the exception of its uncharacveto was not even in China’s own interest, teristic veto in its second year of UN parbut Pakistan’s. The fact that China allowed ticipation, these two vetoes mark the only the resolution to pass two years later when times in Beijing’s 40 year history at the UN the Bangladesh’s admission came to a vote where it has been the determining nega48

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tive vote that prevented a Security Council resolution from passing, and its reasoning was clear – recognition of Taiwan, which Beijing views as an affront to its sovereignty. Beijing’s historical record shows that it unlikely will disagree with an issue so strongly as to block its passing by veto unless the country in question recognizes Taiwan. As such, we can conclude that the issue of Taiwan is the only issue for China which is nonnegotiable.

1973 was an aberration from its many Cold War-era abstentions, which reflected its desire to align itself with neither superpower. As such, it is more difficult to pinpoint China’s rationale for its veto on the Yom Kippur War. China’s historical ties with the Soviet Union most likely played a role in its decision although it is less clear why China gave a firm veto on this issue whereas it abstained from vetoing alongside the Soviet Union in many other issues during this era. China’s rationales for its vetoes along China’s three other vetoes – regardside Russia in the 2000s are more easily ing the Middle East in 1973, Myanmar in analyzed. In 2007, Beijing vetoed with 2007, and Zimbabwe in 2008 – have all Russia against criticizing Myanmar on been alongside vetoes by the Soviet Union human rights. China is particularly sensior its successor state Russia. In other words, tive to criticisms on its own human rights these resolutions would have failed irrespec- record, which it sees as a domestic issue to tive of China’s additional veto. Then, why be handled internally, not subject to inwas Beijing willing to take a firm stand on ternational commentary. Clearly, it had a these three issues in particular, unlike the national interest to protect itself by vetoing other resolutions it abstained from despite the resolution so that China would not bealso disagreeing? Unfortunately, except come the next target of such criticisms. In for the commonality of a double veto with addition, because Russia was also going to Russia, there is not a straightforward rule veto the resolution, the political costs were on such situations unlike those concernsignificantly lowered since China would not ing Taiwan. However, we can still observe have to singly bear the burden of being the where China broke with its usual trend in reason for the resolution’s rejection. these three situations. China’s most recent veto was in 2008 In 1973 China voted with the Soviet against sanctions on Zimbabwe. Several Union against the ceasefire in the Middle factors distinguish it from other cases in East. Since the Yom Kippur War was durwhich China expressed concerns about ining the Cold War, the U.S. was seen as tervention, but did not feel strongly enough the backer of Israel while the U.S.S.R. about to go beyond abstention and actually was considered the ally of the Arab states. veto the resolution. First, Beijing was most China’s veto alongside the Soviet Union in likely willing to take a strong stance on non2011

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intervention in Zimbabwe because it would be a sign of solidarity with the developing world, particularly one in Africa. China’s policy on nonintervention reflects its belief that a country should solve its own problems–and have the option of defining such problems itself–instead of having outside sources such as the UN, which China and the developing world often view as a proxy for the West, impose its values via sanctions and force. This policy of nonintervention protects China against possible future intrusions on its own domestic situation and builds solidarity with the developing world as seen in this veto against Zimbabwean sanction.

Thus, the most logical conclusion for why China chose to go one step forward beyond its usual stance of abstention was because of existing bilateral ties with Zimbabwe and hopes for future ties with Africa and other developing nations.

Based on China’s historical record, the following conclusions on China’s veto strategy can be made: (1) China will be unlikely to use its veto unless there are very special circumstances. It has done so only six times since Beijing’s inclusion into the UN system in 1971 even though it has expressed disagreement with many more resolutions. (2) China will be unlikely to cast a deciding veto on a future resolution A second reason the Chinese were unless it feels that the country in question is perhaps willing to veto on Zimbabwe’s challenging Beijing’s sovereignty on the isbehalf in 2008 was Beijing’s relationship sue of Taiwan. In this case, China will most with Zimbabwe specifically and its hopes likely use the situation to negotiate bilaterfor future relations with Africa generally. ally with the country in question on the In 2006, China signed a $1.3 billion enissue of Taiwan. (3) China will be unlikely ergy deal with Zimbabwe that would proto use its veto on an nonintervention issue vide the African country with coal mines unless an existing veto, most likely from and thermal power stations from Chinese Russia, is already established. In addition, companies. In addition to trade opportuChina’s interests must also be fairly clearly nities, Zimbabwe provided chrome. One at stake. Issues of highest concern are most commentator described the situation: “For likely: human rights precedence, current Harare, an international pariah, China rep- and future investments in Africa, and buildresents its only major international supporting solidarity with Africa and developing er.” While China did not explicitly state its nations. In sum, China’s veto record reveals relationship with Zimbabwe alongside calls clear patterns and prerequisites that reflect for nonintervention in defending its veto, it China’s strategic objectives and how it seis doubtful China did not take such matters lectively uses its veto power to achieve such into consideration when deciding to veto goals. measures against sanctions on Zimbabwe. 50

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Case Study: Sudan Sudan is an important example of an issue where China has used its veto power to not only react to given situations, but to proactively shape the UN agenda through the threat of a veto in conjunction with its bilateral relationship with Sudan. The Darfur conflict has been described as guerrilla conflict, civil war, and genocide, and revolves around accusations of the Sudanese government oppressing and committing genocide against black Africans in favor of Arabs. Between 2004 and 2006, China abstained from six UN resolutions regarding Sudan, where the state-owned company China National Petroleum Corporation owns 40% of the consortium that dominates Sudan’s oil fields. In 2004, when the Security Council neared votes on a series of resolutions threatening to sanction Sudan’s oil sales,Wang Guangya, China’s ambassador to the U.N., confirmed China’s veto threats but dismissed suggestions that its oil interests played a role in the decision, instead saying that the resolutions would have eliminated the Sudan government’s incentive to cooperate. Based on the characteristics of the situation in Sudan, we can see that Sudan is a prime candidate for a potential Chinese veto based on its strategic objectives – (1) The proposed sanctions and use of force fall under China’s longstanding concerns of nonintervention; (2) China has vested interests in the country, most notably the large oil industry on which it depends for fuel; and finally (3) China sees its sup2011

port and defense of Sudan as a way to build traction in its relationship with Africa and the developing world. These factors have given China’s threats of vetoes of the year a certain level of credibility, and as a result, the rest of the Security Council and world at large has learned to listen to or at least negotiate with China’s lead on Sudanrelated issues. However, China has never actually vetoed any sanctions on Sudan, despite threatening to do so on several occasions. As previously noted, China abstained on several votes, thereby expressing its disapproval but still allowing the resolutions to pass. For example, in 2006, when China chaired the Security Council, China allowed Resolution 1672 to pass, imposing sanctions on four Sudanese individuals – including government officials – accused of being involved in the Darfur atrocities. However, China’s lack of actual vetoes does not necessarily mean that the threats lack legitimacy or efficacy. On the contrary, China’s threats have successfully resulted in changed language in several resolutions. This is in line with its strategy of working behind the scenes before the voting record to convince other countries to drop or modify the severity of a resolution’s language. Resolutions 1564, 1591, and 1672 were passed with China’s abstention, but the penalties of the sanctions on Sudan were lessened due to China’s lobbying.

Sudan also serves as a useful case

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study in examining China’s increasing role in the international sphere. In 2007, China voted along with the Security Council in favor of Resolution 1769, which gave UN troops “all the necessary means” to protect themselves, defend civilians, and secure the safe passage of aid in the region under Chapter VII. Although China most likely would not have supported Resolution 1769 had it not received Sudanese government acquiescence, this was a decisive resolution nonetheless. China’s changing policy on Sudan is yet another indicator that Beijing is in the midst of adjusting its stance on noninterference policy into one that is more flexible. Historically speaking, China’s policy towards nonintervention has stemmed from its fears that precedence for sanctions and other measures may be used against it in the future. Its behavior regarding such concerns have been based both on matters of principle, as in the many cases from which China abstained in its early years of UN participation, and on a practical basis, as seen on the issue of human rights in Burma, a sensitive issue for China. In the case of Sudan, China’s stance against sanctions was initially rhetorically couched in the language of nonintervention and more realistically concerned with protecting its oil supply in Sudan and relationship with Africa. However, China began to realize that it was not UN sanctions that would risk its investments in Africa, but rather the lack of sanctions leading to the deteriorat52

ing stability, growing public outrage, and increasing possibility of military intervention which would threaten its stake in the region. Thus, China began to leverage its relationship with Sudan to convince it to engage with the UN. This led to the breakthrough Resolution 1769 mentioned earlier – China played a key role in securing the Sudanese government’s acceptance of the UN peacekeeping plan. Chinese president Hu Jintao even raised the issue with Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir at a summit during his visit to Sudan. As China’s record and initiative on Sudan within the UN structure shows, a new Chinese foreign policy practice is emerging. China’s willingness to use its Security Council veto on the issue of Sudan, whether actual or merely apparent, reflectes Beijing’s continued movement from its previously passive role in the UN to a much more proactive one. In addition to its relationship with Sudan and convincing its government to engage with the UN on the Darfur issue, China is clearly making marked moves towards a proactive role in the international sphere, one that may even be arguably considered as that of a leader on issue such as Sudan. Conclusions Analysis of China’s behavior in the Security Council over the past 40 years has shown an increasingly active and flexible UN policy in Beijing, especially on peace-

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keeping operations and voting pattern in the security council. This can be seen as part of China’s current efforts to present itself as a “responsible power” in the international community. There is no better place for China to pursue legitimacy, improve image, and develop political standing in the international sphere than the UN. China’s increasingly active role in international efforts such as UN peacekeeping has been a conscious effort by Beijing to present itself as a partner and leader in the UN and the international community at large. The transition from passive observer to active participant in the UN can also be seen as part of China’s wider multinational diplomacy strategy. The foundations of China’s modern international diplomacy strategy comes from Deng Xiaoping’s idea of ensuring world peace to ensure domestic development. Throughout the mid-1990’s, China developed the “new security concept,” which saw security as something to be increased through diplomacy and economic interaction, not competition as in the Cold War. This merged with the “peaceful rise” and “peaceful development” concepts often used by Chinese leaders such as President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao to describe China’s goals of becoming a partner, not threat, to the international community. The application of this foreign diplomacy and engagement strategy to its UN policy has led to China developing a more engaged role in the Security Council. China’s status as an emerging power 2011

and aspirations for becoming a great power have shifted Beijing’s approach to its UN policy over the years. Realizing that it needed to begin acting in a way expected of a “responsible power,” Beijing has begun a period of unprecedented international activism in the UN. As we saw in the Sudan case study, Africa has been one such key ground, and China’s relations with other pariah countries may be of use to both the UN, which needs a way to dialogue with difficult regimes, and also to China who seeks to prove itself in the international community. China has shown that it is willing to adapt its previous attitude towards nonintervention issues and use its diplomatic relations with problematic regimes to convince them to be more cooperative with the UN. China’s changing economic and political interests have partly driven this shift, with increased investment in developing countries and increasing hopes for others to see it as a partner and not a threat. Looking forward, we can expect China to continue to increase its presence in the Security Council and its role in the international community.

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References

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“China and the United Nations.” China Institute of International Affairs. New York: Manhattan Publishing Company, 1959. Chen, Lung-Chu. “Formosa, China, and the United Nations.” New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1967. Stoessinger, John George. The United Nations and the Superpowers: China, Russia and America. New York: Random House, 1977. “United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2758.” Web. 11 Nov 2010. <http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/ doc/RESOLUTION/GEN/NR0/327/74/IMG/ NR032774.pdf ?OpenElement>. Shichor, Yitzhak. “China’s Voting Behavior in the U.N. Security Council.” Association for Asian Research, 2006. Web. 9 Nov 2010. <http://www.asianresearch.org/articles/2947.html HYPERLINK “http://www.asianresearch.org/articles/2947.html./”.>. Kim, Samuel S. China, the United Nations and World Order. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979. Yin, He. “China’s Changing Policy on UN Peacekeeping Operations.” Singapore: Institute for Security and Development Policy, 2007. Choedon, Yeshi. “China’s Stand on UN Peacekeeping Operations: Changing Priorities of Foreign Policy.” China Report. 41.1 (2005). Wang, Jianwei. “Managing Conflict: Chinese Perspectives on Multilateral Diplomacy and Collective Security.” Yong Deng and Fei-Ling Wang, eds. In the Eyes of the Dragon: China Views the World. Lanham, MA: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1999. Staehle, Stefan. “China’s Participation in the United Nations Peacekeeping Regime.” MA Thesis for the George Washington University, 2006. Web. 1 Nov 2010. <http://etd-gw.wrlc.org/theses/submitted/etd-

Huo Hwei-ling. “Patterns of Behavior in China’s Foreign Policy: The Gulf Crisis and Beyond.” Asian Survey. 32.3 (1992). Alden, Chris and Paula Cristina Roque. “What China’s New Activism in UN Means for Africa.” South African Institute for International Affairs. 4 Dec 2007. Web. 26 Nov. 2010. <http://www.saiia.org.za/china-in-africa-project-opinion/what-china-s-new-activism-in-un-meansfor-africa.html >. Tyler, Patrick E. “China Asserts Taiwan’s Ties to Guatemala Led to Veto.” The New York Times, 12 Jan 1997. Lewis, Paul. “China Lifts U.N. Veto on Guatemala Monitors.” The New York Times. 21 Jan 1997. “China Vows Veto of Macedonia Force Renewal.” The Los Angeles Times. 25 Feb 1999. Morphet, Sally. “Resolutions and Vetoes in the UN Security Council: The Relevance and Significance.” Cambridge University Press Review of International Studies. 16.4 (1990): 341-359. Tsvangirai, Morgan. “Russia, China Veto UN Sanctions on Zimbabwe.” CNN. 11 July 2008. “Zimbabwe Signs China Energy Deal.” BBC. 12 June 2006. Eisenman, Joshua. “Zimbabwe: China’s African Ally.” The Jamestown Foundation. 5.15 (2005). Large, Daniel. “Beyond ‘Dragon in the Bush’: The Study of China-Africa Relations.” Oxford University Press African Affairs. 107 (2008): 45-61. “Changing Patterns in the Use of the Veto in the Security Council.” Global Policy Forum. Web. 2 Nov 2010. <http://www.globalpolicy.org/security-council/tablesand-charts-on-the-security-council-0-82/use-of-theveto.html>.

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Straus, Scott. “Darfur and the Genocide Debate.” Foreign Affairs. (Jan/Feb 2005). Houser, Trevor and Roy Levy. “Energy Security and China’s UN Diplomacy.” World Security Institute: China Security. 11.5. Goodman, Peter S. “China Invests Heavily in Sudan’s Oil Industry.” The Washington Post. 23 Dec 2004. Medeiros, Evan S. China’s International Behavior: Activism, Opportunism, and Diversification. Rand Corporation, 2009. Kleine-Ahlbrandt, Stephanie and Andrew Small. “China’s New Dictatorship Diplomacy.” Foreign Affairs. (Jan/Feb 2008). Yang Wenchang. “Time to Correct Those Western Misconceptions.” People’s Daily. 9 July 2007. Web. 28 Nov 2010. <http://english.people.com. cn/90001/90780/91342/6210916.html >. Mederios, S. and Taylor Fravel. “China’s New Diplomacy.” Foreign Affairs. (Nov/Dec 2003). Foot, Rosemary. “Chinese Power and the Idea of a Responsible State.” The China Journal. 45.1 (2001). Su Changh. “Discovering China’s New Diplomacy: Multilateral International Institutions and New Thought of China’s Diplomacy.” World Economics and Politics. 4.2 (2005).

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Feminine Power and Protest in Postmodern Japanese Society Amy Xu Abstract: Traditional Japanese ideals of the pure, obedient girl have been destabilized by modern female subcultures that challenge the patriarchal structure of Japanese society. The iconoclastic fashions worn by women like the ganguro girls and Lady Gaga protest the conservative, often restrictive, views held by dominant Japanese society. Although the mass media and markets continuously assimilate these fringe subcultures, the critical social issues exposed by female groups like the ganguro girls remain relevant long after their time in the spotlight.

A nation’s concern for its future often crystallizes around the status of its young women. As the literal and figurative keepers of the bloodline, young women in various cultures have been the subject of intense scrutiny. The patriarchal structure of Japanese society in particular upholds the traditionally chaste and obedient girl as an exemplar of womanhood, thus placing young Japanese women squarely at the “center of national racial defense” (Kinsella 152). Yet, identifying women as “the bodily vessels of national ethnicity” necessarily introduces conflicts of interest between repression and freedom, conformism and individuality, and of course, patriarchal and feminine ideals (Kinsella 152). In the midst of male-dominated society, young women have nevertheless managed to stage a silent but pervasive rebellion. In this paper, I will analyze women that consciously manipulate their styles, such as Lady Gaga and the ganguro (Black Face) girls, to reflect their critiques of society to expose the hidden

maladies that the dominant society seeks to conceal. However, despite the wholehearted efforts made by these female subcultures to challenge social preconceptions, their attempts often fall flat in the face of a hegemonic social structure that ultimately absorbs new subcultures and often uses them for monetary gain. Subcultural protests are effectively and silently stripped of their power by the mass media and marketing machines that counter instances of iconoclastic self-portrayal. While they may not persist, the objections raised by these young women perpetuate the tensions between dominant and subordinate culture that ultimately enables the reshaping of society. Changes in social perceptions are often precipitated by a traumatic national event. In Japan, WWII and the subsequent U.S. occupation intensified the conservative, traditional view of women that gave

Amy Xu is a junior at Duke University, Class of 2012, majoring in Chemistry.

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rise to the current male-dominated social structure. At the time, the threat to ethnic purity posed by American GIs raised fears that “Japanese womanhood would be raped and impregnated indiscriminately” by the incoming U.S. army (Kinsella 153). The purity of Japanese girls required protection at all costs, and women who associated with the enemy were seen as licentious traitors by the “painfully emasculated male imagination” of the post-war period (Kinsella, 153). Indeed, the Japanese girl became a “panic site” in the sense that “visions of disaster…[and] spiritual collapse” coalesced around her image (Napier 329). The postWWII male establishment reincarnate is in the modern Japanese mass media. It is a field dominated by a conservative male press that decries female rebellion with racial slurs, derogatory names, and satirical articles. Regarding Japanese women as the “biological reproducers of the nation,” the press espouses traditional gender roles that view faithful schoolgirls as the “natural and enduring…partners of heroic young kamikaze pilots” (Kinsella 152). In the context of the male media establishment, the pure girl becomes a national symbol and the torchbearer for the survival of the Japanese nation.

the money to cultivate a “full engagement with the culture of consumption” (Yoda 13). The postmodern girl thus fulfilled the stipulations of time, energy, and money necessary for a rebellion against the traditional moors of society. These characteristics, coupled with an environment where “virtually any kind of person [could] be a celebrity or star” produced a generation of self-aware, socially liberal young women not afraid to speak their minds or dress their bodies unlike any group before them (Sato 96).

The outrageous fashion choices of these young women represent a purposeful challenge to the traditional social order. Running completely counter to the image of the faithful schoolgirl or obedient wife, women like Lady Gaga and the Japanese ganguro girls consciously use their styles to critique the underlying problems of society. Often dressed in skimpy, futuristic costumes with elaborate stage makeup and false eyelashes, Lady Gaga utterly and completely flouts existing social conventions. Although her risqué outfits—like the suit of raw meat she donned for the 2010 MTV Music Awards—draw fire from both male and female critics, she justifies her fashion choices as a pointed message against female Yet the industrialization and comobjectification: “if [women] don’t fight for mercialization that followed the Occupaour rights, pretty soon we’re going to have tion resulted in a dramatic rise in disposable as much rights as the meat on our bones” incomes that ushered in a new generation (Gaga quoted in Kit 1). With such an exof young women. Unlike their forebears, planation in mind, Gaga’s stylistic choices these women possessed both the time and can be interpreted as a protest against the 2011

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continued sexual objectification of women.

girls has been remarkably similar in their respective nations, with portrayals of these Like Lady Gaga, the dark-skinned, women as mindless, traitorous, and even theatrically-accessorized styles of the ganless-than-human. In addition to drawing guro (Black Face) girl subculture of the protests from PETA, Gaga’s meat outfit 1990s ran brazenly counter to traditional was derisively speculated to “smell like Japanese values. By donning tropical flowthe rotting flesh that it is…[and] be crawlers on strings of necklaces and sporting ing in maggots” (Collins 1). Likewise, the dark fake tans, ganguro girls took on the ganguro girls have not only been “accused various “hybrid ethnicities” that alternately of undermining tradition,” but also been confused and horrified media critics (Kinsubjected to racial slurs and dehumanizing sella 144). Their dark suntans prompted insults (Kinsella 247). Epithets leveled at comparisons to “animals walking on the them include “ugly witches,” “moron black continent of Africa” and other social Darfaces (obaka no ganguro),” and “girl-animal winistic implications that stripped them of (gyanimal)” (Kinsella 145-148). The harmtheir humanity while denigrating darker less girls were labeled as “infantile” and races (Kinsella 147). The ethnocentric, “tasteless” in the uptight, conservative view racially-tinged remarks elicited by the gan- of the mass media (Kinsella 248). Critiguro subculture exposed Japan’s continual cisms by the male-dominated press clearly insistence on ethnic purity, a national preindicate the panic sites that these young occupation since the years following WWII. women have become. The media sees in Though the ganguro subculture may not their blatant rejection of social standards have begun as an outright critique of racist the dissolution of traditional social moors ideology, its existence and various permuta- that have ensured an orderly, smoothly tions (kogyaru and yamamba, for example) functioning society. Although some critics indicate that the girls discovered a racial are more sensitive to the young women’s sensitivity in the dominant Japanese culture cause, it is no wonder that the majority of which they relentlessly exposed in their popular media regards the new generation desire to assert a new female independence. of girls as “inscrutable, amoral, and apocaLike the ganguro girls, various other female lyptic” (Yoda 21). fashion subcultures, such as the lolita and the cutie, also manipulate style as an asser- In their experimentation with selftion of individuality and rebelliousness. presentation and style, Lady Gaga and the various female subcultures in Japan may in On the whole, critics’ responses have fact be exercising a deeper form of power. been resoundingly negative. The media’s The rise of such iconoclastic girls heralds reception of Lady Gaga and the ganguro the new role of sexuality as a vehicle for fe58

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male ambitions – a so-called “lady power” (Bauer 1). Starting in the post-war era and spurred by the availability of consumption, young women began to control their image as both the “objects and subjects of sexual desire,” affirming their femininity and using it as a form of control (Yoda 20). Women like Gaga and the ganguro girls now revel in the power that overt sexuality endows both over men and over the mass media. Yet inherent in lady power is the positive self-affirmation of a negative image. As Kinsella writes, “women debased as infantile and irresponsible began to fetishize and flaunt their shojo [girl] personality still more, almost as a means of taunting and ridiculing male condemnation” (250). Lady Gaga and the ganguro girls respond similarly to female objectification and racism, respectively—they exaggerate sexual and racial characteristics to the extreme. Such an active affirmation is inherently dangerous (for reasons described further below), but it allows the girls to turn social constructs around and “manipulate [sexism and misogyny in the society] to [their] own advantage” (Yoda 5).

construct, [that] anyone, even a man who’s willing to buck against gender norms, can wield” to increase their popularity (Bauer 2). Popular ever since their teens in the 1990s and featured on advertisements, billboards, and TV, SMAP clearly illustrates the power that feminine sexuality—even when completely constructed—has in the mass media. (That Lady Gaga also understands the construction of femininity is evident in the high-heeled men featured in her music videos.) Men like SMAP willing to take on more effeminate appearances are rewarded with increased popularity and a larger share of the consumer market.

However, the wielding of such feminine power is, on the flip side, a dangerous gamble. By so clearly championing their sexuality, young women ironically risk being interpreted as the very image they seek to reject—a sexualized object. As Bauer writes, “the more successful the embodiment, the less obvious the analytic part is” (2). For Lady Gaga and her ganguro counterparts, the continuous self-affirmation of sexuality and race may in fact jeopardize the strength of their protests; the validity of Not only does lady power grant more their underlying messages is easily obscured leverage in masculine society, it but also by the glitz of their constructed appearincreases popularity in a capitalist social ances. Responses from many male critics sphere. Popular Japanese bands such as indicate that this is in fact what is happenSMAP often manipulate femininity as a ing. Most are unable or refuse to see past the girls’ superficial getup to their implicit marketing strategy and a way to attract an audience of both women and homosexual social critiques, preferring instead to catmen. SMAP and their producers underegorize the girls in magazines resembling stand that “feminine sexuality is a social “illustrated picture books about birds, fish, 2011

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or insects” (Kinsella 150). In addition to jeopardizing the very principles they fight for, female subcultures are also easily absorbed into society due to their transient nature. Like the Candies, a 1970s girl idol group, youth subcultures, such as the ganguro girls, spring up with a fervor that often lasts only as long as the adolescence of its members. Indeed, girlhood and its associated fashions and protests are seen as a transient “detour”—a “liminal girl-time” between birth and the eventual assimilation into society through marriage (Yoda 17). Capitalizing on the transience of youth, the popular TV series Sunset Kitties marked the departure of each member into society and womanhood as a celebratory “graduation” (Yoda 18). Although the sentimental gesture rarely occurs in real life, the entry into wifehood or motherhood in Japan is nonetheless considered a worthwhile achievement (Yoda 17). A young woman’s time as a ganguro girl is thus clearly demarcated as a moratorium before the reincorporation of true adulthood. Given the fleeting nature of adolescence, female subcultures may only be able to protest for as long as their girlhood lasts; even Lady Gaga and the ganguro girls seem to realize the ephemeral nature of their existence and imbue its briefness with all the intensity they can muster. These female groups are assimilated into society not only due to the transience of girlhood but also due to mass media’s 60

active role in their incorporation. Once a new subculture is discovered, the intense media coverage that follows results in a dilution of its originality and forcefulness. Through large-scale coverage and advertising, the popularization of countercultural styles pulls subcultures into the mainstream and divests them of their unconventionality. The power of Lady Gaga and her ganguro girl counterparts does rest on public recognition to a certain extent—otherwise, their protests would never reach a wide enough audience. Yet popularity exceeding a critical point is ultimately detrimental. Mass media’s dissemination of subcultural styles relentlessly pushes the equilibrium towards the tipping point, until finally, what was once novel becomes banal. Like the “commercialization of bosozoku [motorcycle gang] style [that] facilitated nationwide diffusion of bosozoku symbolism and mass participation in the subcultural style,” the rising popularity of female subcultures only signals their eventual demise (Sato 97). The distinctiveness of countercultural groups is further diluted by mass market capitalism. Capitalist enterprise aggressively promotes lesser-known styles to the mainstream, “[scrambling] over one another to invent new goods, services, and gimmicks to sell on the expanding domestic consumer market” (Kinsella 247). The resulting replicas of countercultural objects dramatically decrease the exclusivity of the subculture. Such propaganda primarily targets the mainstream population, but

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even the subcultures themselves fall into the lures of material gain. Female groups like the ganguro girls are characterized by their “notorious faddishness, eagerness to try new product ideas and technology, and sharp radar for detecting new trends on the horizon” (Yoda 2). Such vehement consumption is perhaps necessary for the continual upkeep of appearances, but it ironically perpetuates the very system that the girls protest. Regardless of the target audience, capitalist marketing strategies duplicate once-exclusive subcultural styles and thus dilute their unconventionality just as replicas of a statue diminish the aura of the original. Although motivated primarily by monetary gain, these capitalistic practices actively reincorporate nonconformist groups into society. The various imitators and duplicates produced by such fervent marketing ultimately render the original groups and their protests obsolete. When operating under both media coverage and capitalist strategies, the reincorporation of subcultures becomes continuous and complete. Despite their transient nature and their eventual assimilation at the hands of mass media and mass markets, Lady Gaga and the ganguro girls raise issues that perpetuate long after the women themselves have reentered the dominant culture. Lady power, for example, will remain a complex issue long after Lady Gaga herself has graduated into womanhood; the gender dynamics she toys with will remain open to 2011

debate. Each subculture also has the potential to inspire new groups that branch out or supersede their predecessors and continue the implicit critiques of society. Although the ganguro girl was a phenomenon of the 1990s, the subcultures it spawned (the amazoness, yamamba, mamba, celemba, and kogal, for example) continue to work to the same ends in exposing ethnic contradictions and social prejudices (Kawamura 788-789). Though short-lived, subcultural movements revive debates relegated to the fringes of society. Without such voices of dissent, society risks the gradual assumption of immorality and ignorance. In analyzing the complex dynamics of rebellion versus coexistence among female subcultures and society, it becomes clear that mass media and the social constructs it espouses have the final say. The media not only perpetuates the ideal images of society—like the devoted schoolgirl and her kamikaze companion—it consequently eradicates subcultures by popularizing once-exclusive trends. In addition to the media, mass markets and the transient, consumption-dependent nature of youth subcultures also cement their eventual demise. Despite the attempts of Lady Gaga and her Japanese ganguro counterparts to dismantle or at least challenge existing preconceptions, the media and markets never fail to present an effective counterattack. In popularizing and replicating unconventional styles, the mass media and marketing machines incorporate social subcultures to

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maintain a homogenous, like-minded popu- References lation. In the face of such opposing forces, the brazen young women of these subBauer, Nancy. “Lady Power.” The New York Times Opinionator. 20 June 2010. Web. 12 Oct 2010. <http://opincultures nevertheless raise objections that perpetuate the tensions between dominant ionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/lady-power/>. and subordinate culture. Through their ef- Collins, Leah. “Lady Gaga’s meathead move.” The Province. 15 Sep 2010. Wb. 12 Oct forts, issues once relegated to the edges of social consciousness become at once visible 2010.<http://www.theprovince.com/business/ Lady+Gaga+meathead+move/3526440/story.html>. and contentious. Only in the push and pull between culture and subculture does society Kawamura, Yuniya. “Japanese Teens as Producers of Street Fashion.” Current Sociology. 54.5 (2006): 784-801. have a chance of evolution and ultimately of improvement. Kinsella, Sharon. “Black Faces, Witches, and Racism against Girls.” Bad Girls of Japan. Ed. Laura Miller and Jan Bardsley. Palgrave Macmillan, 2005: 142-157.

Kinsella, Sharon. “Cuties in Japan.” Bad Girls of Japan. Ed. Laura Miller and Jan Bardsley. Palgrave Macmillan, 2005: 142-157. Kit, Zorianna. “Gaga insists meat garb is no cheap gag.” The Vancouver Sun. 14 Sep 2010. 12 Oct 2010. <http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/Gaga +insists+meat+garb+cheap/3522906/story.html>. Napier, Susan. “Panic Site: The Japanese Imagination of Disaster from Godzilla to Akira.” Journal of Japanese Studies. 19.2 (1993): 327-351. Sato, Ikuya. Kamikaze Biker. Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 1998. Yoda, Tomiko. “Kogyaru and the Economy of Feminized Consumer Society.” Zappa: the Social Space and Movements of Contemporary Japan. Ed. Sabu Kohso and Yutaka Nagahara (forthcoming), Autonomedia.

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China’s Criminal Justice System in a Globalizing World Haoxiaohan Helen Cai Abstract: As the 2010 Rio Tinto trial suggests, the Chinese Community Party’s manipulation of the criminal justice system poses a serious concern to both the domestic and international community. The Chinese criminal codes were based on the analogous Soviet ones. However, the Chinese system results in harsher and longer sentences, and its comparative lack of specificity allows the Communist Party to interpret laws as it sees fit. The greater severity of Chinese criminal code is evident in comparisons in two cases: (1) China’s 1979 Criminal Procedure Law and Criminal Law with the Soviet Union’s 1960 Code of Criminal Procedure and RSFSR Criminal Code and (2) sentences for similar crimes in both countries. Although both systems have undergone changes, the Soviet code has become noticeably more liberal, whereas China’s still leaves much control in the hands of the Communist Party and allows corporate cases to be brought to criminal court as with Rio Tinto.

On March 21st 2010, four employees of a British-Australian mining company were tried in a Shanghai criminal court in what came to be known as the Rio Tinto trial. The accused, three Chinese and one Australian, were charged with stealing ‘state secrets,’ a count that ensured a secret trial, which excluded foreign observers and most of the native public. The three-day trial exposed troubling aspects of the Chinese criminal justice system that have persisted since 1979. In this article, I will be using the Rio Tinto case to demonstrate how the Communist Party of the People’s Republic of China affects its criminal justice system in the modern, globalized world. As evidenced by the Rio Tinto trial, Chinese law and punishment is no longer limited just to its citizens – even foreigners dealing with China may be under its claimed jurisdic-

tion.Therefore, although criminal justice is often considered a domestic issue, the communist legal system is immensely relevant to the entire international community as China is increasingly participating in the world through its economy. In order to understand how cases like the Rio Tinto trial came to occur, we must first look to the philosophy, history, and application of Chinese criminal law that led up to March 21. This will be accomplished by juxtaposing the communist legal systems of China and the former Soviet Union. This is a viable analysis because the former USSR and China both witnessed communist upheavals that created starkly new Criminal Codes and Criminal Procedural Laws. I believe that while China borrowed heavily from USSR’s criminal code, the

Haoxiaohan Helen Cai is a Duke freshman, Class of 2014, planning to major in Public Policy. She is the head organizer of the annual Duke-UNC China Leadership Summit. 2011

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Chinese version diverged sufficiently from its parent document, so that while the Soviet criminal code shied away from its penalty-based roots with vigorous liberal amendments, the Chinese equivalent would continue to be manipulated by the Communist Party and stagnate well into the 21st century.

sought a strict legal system that would educate its citizens through punishment. Second, the comparison of the literature in the actual Codes will show that China’s code is more open for government manipulation. Third, the application of the Codes in actual courts will prove that Chinese sentences tend to be harsher than USSR equivalent for the comparable ciriminal trials. Finally, The data and evidence I will be an examination of legal reform in both using to support my argument are the 1979 countries will highlight that the SovietCriminal Procedure Law of the PRC (“Chi- turned-Russian CL and CP have adapted nese CP”), the 1960 Code of Criminal to the more liberal standards of criminal Procedure of the RSFSR (“Soviet CP”), the law while the Chinese ones still enable Rio 1979 Criminal Law of the PRC (“Chinese Tinto trials to occur. CL”), and the 1960 RSFSR Criminal Code (“Soviet CL”). These sources are invaluable I. Philosophy and History of the because a contrast of chapters, charges, and Criminal Justice Systems rights included or excluded from the Chinese code will reveal that the Chinese one Much of Chinese criminal law is deis more susceptible to government interpre- rived from that of the former Soviet Union, tation and interference for it is three times and therefore, similarities in the philosophy shorter than the Soviet equivalent. My data and justification of such laws are inevitable. also includes a comparison of the length of Both countries had inquisitorial justice prison sentences assigned to dissidents after systems (the state is in charge of heading being tried for identical charges in both investigation and seeking evidence instead countries. Gathered from online databases of either of the two parties), both laws were of Chinese and Soviet records, these quan- a hodge-podge of the inquisitorial tradition titative statistics are concrete evidence that and socialist legal tendencies (Osakwe 444), Chinese punishments in criminal trials tend both issued sentences aim for reform rather to be more punitive. than vindication (Berman, et al. 238), and both legal systems came about as a re To prove my thesis, I will be examin- sponse to turbulent communist movements. ing four topics in Sino-USSR differences China was gripped by the Cultural Revoluand addressing them in four sections. First, tion three years prior to the 1979 ratificaan analysis of the history and philosophies tion whereas USSR witnessed the end of of the justice system will reveal that China Stalin’s legal nihilism seven years before its 64

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1960 one (Osakwe 456). The most critical shared trait of the two systems is the belief that “the facts [to a case] are ascertainable, and that the rules of criminal procedure are simply a means by which those facts will be disclosed” (Belkin 10). Despite these similarities, the disparate history and politics of each country distinguish their codes.

tumultuous Cultural Revolution became comparatively less stable, Chinese legislators studied the Soviet system and came to the conclusion that reserving considerable government sway in the legal system would be most conducive to maintaining the communist order. The decision to use the government to maintain a certain type of order originates from the Confucian school For the USSR, we start with the of thought, which had been entrenched in 1960 Soviet CL and CP, which were creChinese legislating for at least two millennia ated after Joseph Stalin’s thirty-one year(Liu 4). Confucianism holds that humans long rule during which the Soviet CL and are fundamentally good and that cultural CP of 1922 were largely ignored. This legal norms, not formal laws, should govern vacuum created a surge of legislative reviand change behavior. Though formal laws sion after Stalin’s death. It aimed at resurbecame an inevitable component of a recting the public’s faith in trials, a majorfunctioning state, the Confucian tenet of ity of which had verdicts even before the reeducation still managed to assert itself in case reached the courtroom (Osakwe 454). China’s justice system. The Chinese CL enMany legal scholars agree that the Soviet courages government involvement in crimigovernment had an interest in creating a nal trials in order to correct behavior. Thus, swift, fair, and lawful legal system after the compared to the Soviet goal of maintaining 1960 when Soviet CL and CP were drafted. public confidence in the legal system, the So, it is hypothesized that most violations of Chinese goal is more susceptible to the obany defendant’s due process protections did jectives of the communist leadership. not occur as a result of government intervention (Osakwe 457). II. Criminal Procedural Laws and Code of Criminal Law China had an even rockier past with its legal system prior to the 1979 when Scholars generally agree that China Chinese CL and CP were being adopted. draws a considerable amount of its crimiThe Cultural Revolution left almost no nal justice system off of the Soviet equivavestiges of a legal system intact; the Article lent. As explained by Berman, Cohen, 137 of the Chinese Criminal Law Code, an and Russell (1973), criminal justice in both article that is not in the Soviet counterpart, countries was structured skeletally by a makes it a crime to “assemble crowds for Criminal Law Code (CL) and the Criminal beating, smashing, and looting.”After the Procedural Code (CP).CL spells out sub2011

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stantive criminal law by determining what constitutes a crime, what rights a defendant has, or what is within a court’s jurisdiction, whereas CP is the flesh of the system and actually administers the decision, serving to define the court’s purpose and regulate the technical aspects of a trial, which include the nature of defense counsel, pretrial matters, and basis for pre-sentencing detainment.

shorter, yet addresses the same range of crimes (‘amount of information’ applies comparable depth of content). The lack of specificity in the Chinese set translates to a legal system more open for interpretation and harsher sentencing. This reality will be explored in the analysis of data in Section III.

Although the Soviet and Chinese CL and CP are similar in rhetoric and layout as explained above, they still possess critical differences. While derived from the Soviet set, the Chinese set is almost five times

Another important procedural difference is that, although the Soviet CP never explicitly states that the defendant is innocent until guilty, the language of the CP (“the investigator may not transfer the obli-

The codes support my thesis that the Chinese courts are more easily manipu Moreover, both China and USSR lated by the party and that they persecute a employed an inquisitorial justice system al- wider variety of crimes and dole out more though most western countries adopted the stringent punishments. In terms of proceadversarial system. An inquisitorial justice dural law, the 1960 Soviet CP allows the system places the burden of fact-finding defendant more judicial freedom. In Soviet on the state or the court while the advercourts, a defendant is guaranteed a defense sarial one requires that both parties to the attorney. In Chinese courts, the availabilcase conduct their own evidence searching, ity of defense counsel is contingent on the which places the burden of proof on the opinion of the judge. This is a problematic prosecution. An inquisitorial system is theo- set-up, considering that the Chinese judge retically more evolved from the retaliatory answers to the chief procurator who ansystem of private vengeance than the adswers to the local communist party head versarial one, but in the implementation of of public security (Belkin 65) – if the party the procedural laws, the inquisitorial system wants to secure the outcome of a political tends to become ‘backward’ (Osakwe 455). trial, it can pass directions to the judge so Both Soviet and Chinese laws also share an the defendant can be found guilty. Even if exclusion of habeas corpus, no right to bail, a defendant is granted an attorney, that atand a fundamental belief in reeducating a torney also may be penalized by the party transgressor back into productive, socialist- for putting up a vigorous defense. (Belkin communist life. 61).

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gation of proof to the accused”) suggests a presumption of innocence that is lacking in the Chinese CP. These procedural fixtures amount to the defendant’s lack of fair representation in court, as well as a verdict that often has been decided by the communist party prior to trial. Comparatively speaking, Chinese and Soviet Criminal Law Codes are more divergent than their respective procedural codes. A side-by-side read-through of both codes will first reveal that the Chinese Law is more staunchly communist. Article 2 of the Chinese CL states that the justice system aims to “struggle against counterrevolutionary conduct,” whereas the Soviet equivalent in Article 1 employs more conservative language in seeking “to protect the socialist legal order.” Furthermore, Chinese CL has a very liberal jurisdiction that can even extend to foreigners (Munro 137) as seen in the Rio Tinto trial. The Chinese CL also considers crimes involving property, crimes against the state, which is a significant detail because the court deems a case a ‘secret’ trial and closes it to spectators, further obfuscating transparency (Berman 252). Until the Chinese CL was mildly revised in 1997, the court could prosecute a defendant on analogy, meaning that if the court wanted to punish the defendant for a socially dangerous act, it can issue a sentence as long as it can claim that his actions were ‘analogous’ to an act prohibited in the CL.. Other troubling features of the Chinese CL, which are excluded in the So2011

viet one, include a permanent trial record, regardless of sentencing, and silence on what may mitigate the circumstances of the listed prohibited acts (Berman 249). This analysis of the codes leads to the conclusion that compared to the Soviet’s criminal justice system, China’s is more susceptible to manipulation by the communist government and is freer to assign punishments. In order to see if the conclusion from the texts is actually applied in court, we will compare sentences for both countries in the next section. In this section, I created dyads of trials from both communist China and USSR. I decided to include only the cases of political dissidents and pair each set of trials based on equivalent charges in their respective countries. Political dissidents were selected because their trials would most likely have garnered the attention and manipulation of communist leadership, which is the subject of this paper’s scrutiny. One caveat to the data of this evaluation is that all the Soviet cases were tried before the 1991 disbanding of the Soviet Union and therefore the abolition of the Soviet criminal codes, while the most recent Chinese case cited happened in 2009. I contend that slight year-disjunction is not significant enough to disprove my thesis. In the seven dyads provided, the Chinese sentences for the same charges are longer or harsher six out of seven times.

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This trend is in line with the textual analysis from section II: compared to that of the USSR, China’s criminal justice courts facilitate the fulfillment of communist goals. The dyads support my claim that China’s communist party is more willing than the USSR’s to use imprisonment as a punitive measure to reform wrongdoers in society. IV. China and USSR and Criminal Justice Today – Rio Tinto

Since the adoption of the 1979 Chinese Codes and the 1960 Soviet Codes, both sets of codes have undergone revisions. However, while the Soviet codes were completely altered in 1991 because of the dissolution of the USSR, China’s codes only witnessed some minor changes in 1997. In 1991, the Soviet codes gave way to a new system of justice, which presumed innocence, instigated the adversarial system, created an independent jury, and made

III. Comparison of Actual Trials during Communist Regimes Name, Occupation, Year Country Tried Vadim Delaunay (USSR) 1967 Poet Wang Dan (China) Dem- 1989 ocratic Party Student Zviad Gamsakhurdia 1977 (USSR) Scientist, Writer

Charge

Libel, participation in 3 years Red Square Rebellion Participation in Tianan- 7 years men Square Rebellion Anti-Soviet Activities 2 years, 3years exile in Siberia Anti-Chinese Activities 18 years

Wei Jingshen (China) 1979 Activist Viacheslav Chornovil 1965, Slander (Ukrainian (USSR) Documentarian, 1971, 1980 documentaries), AntiUkrainian Separatist Soviet messages, Falsified Rape Charges, Ukrainian Separatist Movements Liu Xiaobo (China) Lit- 1989, Counterrevolutionary erary Critic, Professor 1995, Propaganda, Tianan1996, 2009 men Square, Disturbing Social Order, Anti-China Messages 68

Sentence

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2 years, 6 months, 3 years, 11 years

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Name, Occupation, Year Country Tried Victor Nekipelov (USSR) 1968 Poet, Translator, Activist Cai Julin (China) Busi2003 nessman, Writer Eliyahu Essas (USSR) Jewish Activist Bao Tong (China) Government Official, Writer Anatoly Koryagin (USSR) Psychiatrist Bao Xunxi (China) Historian Joseph Brodsky

Sentence

Political Subversion

2 years 3 years

1973

Political Subversion, Anti-Party Internet Comments Betraying State Secrets

1989

Betraying State Secrets

7 years

1981

Political Agitation and Propaganda Counterrevolutionary propaganda Political Agitation and Social Parasitism Political Agitation and Revealing State Secrets

7 years

1989 1964

Shi Tao (China) Reporter 2004 the courts self-reliable instead of under the oversight of local government (Thaman). In China, the 1997 amendments only began to toy with the idea of an incomplete adversarial system, establishing that procurators can no longer simply rule someone guilty without bringing him to court. What is left to be desired in the Chinese system includes the presumption of innocence, the exclusion of corporate trials from criminal courts, the abolition of ‘secret’ trials, the ability of defense counsel to access the evidence to be presented against his defendant in trial, and the sequestering of the judicial branch from the Communist party (Belkin 83). 2011

Charge

No prison

5 years 5 years 10 years

These deficiencies are evident in the Rio Tinto trial. Rio Tinto is a foreign mining giant operating in China. Four of its executives, one of whom is an Australian citizen, have pled guilty to “accepting money that prosecutors have deemed bribes” (Barboza) while Rio Tinto representatives have claimed that the money exchanged were loans to invest in stocks. Whatever the actual transaction was, the initial allegations were that the four had disclosed state secrets. This charge warranted the Rio Tinto executives a ‘closed trial’ that excluded foreign officials from witnessing any hearings or trial proceedings. It is the opinion of some familiar with the case that Rio Tinto

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was being punished by the government for having feuded with China’s steel association over iron ore prices (Barboza). This belief is corroborated by the abrupt dropping of the ‘state secret’ allegation as soon as a ‘closed trial” was granted. The pretrial motions left the defense attorneys with little idea of what evidence was to be pursued in trial, and the actual trial itself was conducted in a criminal court for a corporate issue.

predicted to surpass the United States as the world’s largest in 2020 with a majority of its revenue originating in its relationships with foreign nations (Adam). Foreigners will be interacting with China and its government in increasing frequency, which may lead to further instances of judicial skirmishes and overextensions in jurisdiction.

Because the Chinese CL and CP enable government intervention in trials, it is Had this trial been tried under Rusmy contention that China’s stagnant crimisia’s new justice system, the men would not nal justice system can only be amended to have been sentenced to ten years in prison keep pace with its growing involvement on (Welle). Despite the efforts of the 1997 Chi- the international field when the CL and nese reforms, Rio Tinto suffered from a tri- CP are amended drastically. Foreign presal lacking transparency. A conflict between sures may be necessary in order to instigate the company’s aims and the government’s this change. Scholars such as Ira Belkin goals resulted the corporation’s criminal have argued that “while challenges to the prosecution, and its subsequently harsher Communist Party are not tolerated, many sentence. The analysis of the Chinese CL people are working within the existing and CP texts, coupled with the data from political structure in China to accelerate the actual cases prognosticate a case like the the speed and broaden the scope of legal Rio Tinto trial. Designed with loopholes in reform” and that the criminal justice system mind, the Chinese CL and CP allowed the will reform itself through inward measures. government to manipulate the Shanghai Belkin made this statement in 2000, but court to chastise the foreign company that there have been no changes to the system dared to disobey the Chinese authorities. since. His argument is also contradictory: the government is so inextricably tied to the The Rio Tinto trial may only be the legal system that attempts at reform would first of many troubling cases to occur. Since be perceived as an attack on the commuthe World Trade Organization designated nist establishment. Furthermore, some of China as one of the top countries to pursue the political dissidents listed in Section III business ventures and direct foreign invest- were involved in attempt to redress the legal ments in 2003, international investors have system in place but have been consequently flocked to the Chinese market. According tried and imprisoned as a result of their acto Bloomberg News, China’s economy is tions. 70

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References

In conclusion, China’s current criminal justice system has not evolved since its conception but it is rapidly becoming relevant on a global scale with China’s ascension in the world economy. Even compared to the legal system of another communist state, the Soviet Union, China’s harsher protocols and readiness to imprison its defendants in court is more institutional, punitive character. Global citizens ought to be worried about the legal operations of the world’s largest country but out of concern for the future health of the global economy if not from a human rights perspective. If foreign legal experts and legislators do not intervene to address the CL and CP drafted originally for China as it emerged from a chaotic revolution, then they may one day find their own country’s citizens involuntarily extricated in and subjected to the world’s soon-to-be most powerful country’s outdated criminal justice system.

Adam, Shamim. “China May Surpass U.S. by 2020 in `Super Cycle.” Standard Chartered Says.” Bloomberg. 14 Nov 2010. Web. Barboza, David. “Rio Tinto Trial in China Concludes.” New York Times. 24 Mar 2010, Global Business sec. Print. Berman, Harold J., Susan Cohen, and Malcolm Russell. “A Comparison of the Chinese and Soviet Codes of Criminal Law and Procedure.” The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. 73.1 (Spring 1973). JSTOR. Northwestern University. Davies, Ken. “Foreign Direct Investment in China.” Chinability. 2009. Web. 21 Nov 2010. Liu, Jianhong. “Philosophical Ideas of Confucius and Values of Restorative Justice.” Restorative Justice (2007). Prison Fellowship International. Lubman, Stanley. “Rio Tinto Trial Shines Harsh Spotlight on Chinese Criminal Justice.” East Asia Forum. 29 Mar. 2010. Web. 20 Nov 2010. Munro, Robin. “The Beijing Trials: Secret Judicial Procedures and the Exclusion of Foreign Observers.” News from Asia Watch (1991). Naumov, Anatolyi V. “The New Russian Criminal Code as a Reflection of Ongoing Reforms.” Criminal Law Forum 8.2 (1997): 191-230. Osakwe, Christopher. “Modern Soviet Criminal Procedure: A Critical Analysis.” Tulane Law Review 57.3 (1983). HeinOnline. People’s Republic of China. NPC’s Standing Committee. 1979 Criminal Procedure Law of the PRC. Welle, Deutsch. “Harsh Verdict in Rio Tinto Trial.” Ethiopian Review. 31 Mar. 2010.

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Whose Blues? Folk Music and ‘Enka’ in 1960s Japan Brian White Abstract: Few decades in recent Japanese history have been as politically fraught as the 1960s, typically characterized as a decade of protests. Two dominant forms of music emerged from this period: protest folk and enka. These two genres reflected the conflicting visions of “Japan” that were formulated by the younger and older generations. Both enka and protest folk drew upon Japanese folk symbols to formulate a way forward for the postwar society, but each saw these symbols in very different ways. This paper examines the rhetoric by which protest folk and enka music constructed idealized visions of what Japan had been in the past and what it could be in the future. Furthermore, it analyzes the different ways in which rural Japan is constructed in these songs to create very different ideological results. The paper concludes that enka and folk are both driven by themes of urban alienation and blue-collar imagery and differ only in the ends they hope to achieve.

Few decades in recent Japanese history have been as politically fraught as the 1960s. In historical accounts, authors typically characterize it as a decade of protests carried out by students dissatisfied with a host of social issues including the renewal of the US-Japan Security Treaty (Nichibei Anzen Hosho Joyaku, hereafter given as its abbreviated name ‘Ampo’), a troubled university system seen as desperately outdated, and the escalating war in Vietnam. These protests, which became very violent by the end of the decade, represented at one level a struggle over the ways in which the Japanese people would define themselves, specifically in relation to the United States in the post-Occupation period and to their own wartime history. The ideologies at work in this period can be further understood by studying two dominant forms of music that were produced at the time: protest folk and enka. These two genres reflect the conflict-

ing visions of “Japan” that were formulated by the younger and older generations respectively, visions which both drew upon Japanese folk symbols to formulate a way forward for the postwar society, but which saw these symbols in very different ways. Two protests in particular dominate the discourse on 1960s Japan, and using these two protests I shall show the changing sentiments of students that led to the rise of protest folk music. These protests took place in 1960 and 1969 and primarily focused on resisting the renewal of the Ampo treaty. As Tsurumi Kazuko notes in her comparison of the two protests, a heavy increase in violence was seen in the 1969 protest relative to its counterpart at the start of the decade (Tsurumi, Continuity and Change 1970, 28). Concomitantly, the late 1960s also saw the rise of Japanese “folk” music – with “folk” here being used in the

Brian White is a senior at the University of Pennsylvania, majoring in East Asian Languages and Civilizations with a concentration on Japanese Language and Culture.

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sense of the “folk movement” rather than traditional Japanese songs – a means by which students voiced their dissatisfaction with the status quo in what Carolyn Stevens calls “the first direct and overt politicization of popular music” in the postwar period (Stevens 2008, 64).

conscious effort to define a Japanese identity than most other postwar music movements.

Part of this effort was the so-called “rock in Japanese” debate, which arose in the 1960s with the growing popularity of rock and roll in Japan. For much of the decade, Japanese rock and roll bands were In view of the students’ dissatisfacexpected to sing in English, even if the tion with extant structures of power and songs were original compositions, as this authority, it is unsurprising that the music was viewed as the “authentic” language of they produced also undermined traditional the genre (Bourdaghs 2005, 123). As the notions of authenticity and power. Stevens decade drew to a close, however, musicians defines Japanese folk music as a genre “am- like those participating in the folk moveateurs could take part in through producment worked to create a wasei (“made in tion, rather than just consumption,” since Japan”) style that was more directly accesfolk musicians opted for the more economi- sible and meaningful to a Japanese-speaking cal, stripped-down sound of the acoustic audience. Michael Bourdaghs emphasizes guitar, which could be easily bought by the importance of folk music’s Japanese lyrmost anyone that wished to learn. This was ics when he analyzes it as a genre in which in contrast to the amplified, professional musicality was “a secondary medium, one sound of the electric guitar popular in the important only in so far as it conveyed the early-decade eleki and GS (Group Sounds) primary message contained in the lyrics.” movements that had been inspired by for(Bourdaghs 2005, 122) The sparse sound eign acts such as the Ventures (Stevens of the acoustic guitar used by the majority 2008, 44) A monograph published by the of folk musicians was thus important not Japan branch of the International Associa- only because it was different from extant tion for the Study of Popular Music states, musical styles, but also because it was infor instance, “Many young people began to tended from the start to be secondary to the learn by themselves how to play the guitar singer’s lyrics. in the ‘folk’ boom. Since then the guitar has been one of the main tools for Japanese Perhaps one of the most famous young people’s self-expression.” (Internaartists to come out of the folk boom of the tional Association for the Study of Popular late 1960s was Okabayashi Nobuyasu (born Music 1991, 16) I would draw particular 1946). His songs, sometimes controversial attention here to the “self ” of “self-expres- enough to be banned by the Recording sion,” as the folk boom represented a more Industry Association of Japan, dealt with 2011

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many different politically sensitive topics. Roger Goodman lists just a few of the issues covered on Okabayashi’s debut album, saying:

their upper-class roots in order to position themselves as more in-tune with the plight of the working class. Secondly, they used it as an ideological tool to bind the group of students together more closely in self-sacrificing solidarity. The music that students listened to and produced both reflected and reproduced their self-sacrificing beliefs, such as in Okabayashi’s quietly reassuring song “Tomo yo”:

Watashi wo Danzai Seyo contained songs criticizing the Vietnam War (Sensou no Oyadama), Japanese labor conditions (‘Sanya Blues’), and the perils of Japan’s capitalist aspirations (Sore de Jiyuu Natta no Kai). Okabayashi also wrote songs that explored taboo topics like the discrimi nation against descendants of Edo Japan’s pariah caste, Tomo yo, kimi no namida kimi no ase (My the burakumin. (Tegami) friends, the day is coming when) Tomo yo, mukuwareru sono hi ga kuru In the tradition of folk singers in the (Your tears and sweat will be repaid, my United States such as Bob Dylan, Okafriends) bayashi’s songs profiled Japanese on the Yoake wa chikai, yoake wa chikai (The dawn is margins of mainstream society, the same near, the dawn is near) Japanese whom student radicals claimed Tomo yo, kono yami no muko ni wa (My friends, to represent in their struggles, as a way of on the other side of this darkness) criticizing the social structure that created Tomo yo, kagayaku ashita ga aru (There is a their disadvantaged position. Ironically, shining tomorrow, my friends) these students “came from relatively higher upper-status households” that were most Folk music not only served as a folikely separated from the working class with rum in which students voiced their comwhom they chose to identify in their activist plaints, but also reflexively addressed the political orientation (Krauss 1974, 52). students themselves, urging them on to selfless acts of denial that would position them Furthermore, by participating in symbolically alongside the disadvantaged demonstrations, these students put at risk lower classes for whom they sought to act as the elite futures guaranteed by attendstandard bearers. ing their respective universities. Steinhoff describes “an ideology of self-denial and In sum, the students felt that, rejection of privilege” that the students through their own self-denial, they would mobilized in the second half of the decade be able to create a Japan that was sensitoward a twofold goal. (Steinhoff 1999, tive to the needs not only of the ruling 5) First, they distanced themselves from elite, but also of the marginalized working 74

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class and rural citizenry. Folk singers drew upon imagery of these classes to call attention to the failings of the postwar Japanese government to make good on the notion that democracy was a system that benefited all members of society. The students and musicians called for a Japan truly run by its people, or in the words of “Watashitachi no nozomu mono wa”, another song by Okabayashi, “What we wish for / isn’t ‘us for the sake of society.’ / What we wish for / is ‘society for the sake of us.’” (Watashitachi no nozomu mono wa/shakai no tame no watashi de wa naku/watashitachi no nozomu mono wa/ watashitachi no tame no shakai na no da.) This meant not only a reform of Japanese government policy, but also a reconfiguration of Japan’s relationship with the United States, which the students felt was embodied in Ampo. For protest folk singers, the wasei philosophy applied not just to their music, but to their hopes for society.

sociation for the Study of Popular Music 1991, 12) After a lull in popularity during the first half of the twentieth century, the modern form of enka “came into use in the latter half of the 1960s… in reaction to Japanese pop, and perhaps also as a reaction to the wider Western presence in popular culture.” (Stevens 2008, 45) Though it shared foundational roots with protest folk music – one could even reasonably consider it to be the protest folk of Meiji Japan – enka would come to represent a completely different view of Japan and its people from folk music.

Socially, enka is completely different from folk music. Unlike the folk music that is often performed in solo, enka music is the product of group collaboration at every level, to the point that singers become essentially interchangeable. Songs are written and performed following kata (patterns) which Yano describes as being used so In contrast to protest folk stood the that “a 1993 hit is… easily mistaken for a genre of enka, which could be loosely 1953 one, and for the duration of the song, defined as “Japanese country western” in the forty-year gap is neatly erased.” (Yano its frequently pessimistic subject matter. 2002, 3) The purpose of this erasure is to Enka was born out of similar feelings of bind together in extratemporal solidarity alienation from society at large, but rather the listeners and performers and to make than being the voice of student dissent, it them as timeless as their conception of “auwas an expression of emotional isolation by thentic” Japan. Within enka is another path Japanese in middle-age or older. Ironically, for Japanese identity, separate from that of however, enka also has its roots in protest folk music. It is a perpetual Japan that has movements. The IASPM states, “The word existed unchanged forever, merely being suenka originated during the people’s freedom perficially covered up by the progression of movement of the 1880s as the name of a urbanization. For those that listened to it in kind of protest song.” (International Asthe 1960s, the proper way forward for Japa2011

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nese society was actually to go backward, “the vanguard of Japanese tradition, both back to a morally “purer” time of tradition. culturally and psychologically.” (Stevens 2008, 45) These fans are not just stewards Although enka music calls for a return of a genre, but of Japanese culture itself. to a more traditional time in Japanese hisThrough concert attendance, record sales, tory, especially before the U.S. Occupation and fan club memberships, they are confollowing World War II, it uses primarily tributing to the perpetuation of Japanese western instrumentation to create its sound. culture in the midst of the westernization Enka performances are accompanied by that took place during and after the Occu“some combination of guitar, violin, manpation. Their ideas of what Japan should dolin, saxophone, clarinet, oboe, and acbe in the future were contained not just in cordion” with only occasional additions of the lyrics of enka, but in its very structure as Japanese instruments “to impart a tradian industry. tional Japanese ‘flavor’ to the music.” (Yano 2002, 103) But even though these additions For its listeners, enka’s strength as a are infrequent, the “flavor” they create is cultural pillar lies in the collective solidarity the part of the music that becomes most it encourages. “The enticement of enka,” important to its creation of tradition. says Christine Yano, “is that it suggests a forum for collective nostalgia, which actively In production, as well, enka represents appropriates and shapes the past, thereby an entirely different school of thought from binding the group [i.e. listeners] together.” folk music. Yano describes the enka industry (Yano 2002, 15) The shape that that past as one defined by metaphors of “persever- takes, specifically, is that of the furusato, ance, effort, spirit, repetition, and rank.” which is directly translated as “old village,” (Yano 2002, 45) Through its hierarchical but which carries meaning much greater production system in which deference must than such a simple translation can conbe paid to one’s seniors in the industry, vey. Enka songs contain images of fishing regardless of relative success, enka becomes towns on the outskirts of Japan, villages set an example in practice of the values in its amongst rice paddies, and other rural culsongs. As a genre, it is seen as the undertural signifiers that, to those who consume dog persevering in competition with “the them, define “Japan.” Furusato is a shared showy, facile, heavily western-influenced nostalgia, the simple life of rural Japan, ‘pops’ whose popularity looms large.” from which listeners of enka all imagine (Yano 1997, 117) The genre itself becomes they come and to which they all can return metaphorical for the perseverance of the through music. old way of Japanese life, and those that listen to and produce it are positioned as Yet, just as important as furusato’s 76

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universality to its listeners is its distance, for it is in this distance that it becomes desirable. Yano writes that although enka offers to erase the distance between its listeners and their mythical homesteads, “the erasure of distance threatens the very need for desire.” (Yano 2002, 16) However, this distance is more than simply geographical or temporal; it is metaphorical and even spiritual. For as Robertson states, “with the rapid urbanization of the countryside since the postwar period, the Japanese ‘can’t go home again.’” (Robertson 1988, 497) With no referent, the nostalgia for furusato is at risk of fading into historical memory and disappearing. How, then, is enka able to sustain itself ? As a genre whose subject matter is by definition illusory, how does enka continue to thrive on images of the furusato? The answer lies in the rhetorical process of furusato-zukuri (furusato-making). This is an active process present in enka as well as many other institutions that seek to capitalize on the nostalgia for “Japan.” Robertson describes it as being motivated by “nostalgia for a sense of nostalgia,” which is created through “a diffuse sense of homelessness” brought about by the loss of the same traditional rural villages that would later be appropriated by the rhetorical device of the furusato. (Robertson 1988, 497) In enka, furusato-making is accomplished by keeping the discursive distance between the modern listener and the traditional subject just small enough that it seems to be just around the proverbial corner. While the most common word found by Yano in enka 2011

lyrics was yume (“dream”), the third was anata (“you”). (Yano 2002, 94) From this, it can be inferred that the lyrics are often addressed directly to the listener, creating a personal identification with the furusato described in the lyrics. Furthermore, this “old village” is described as something that waits for the listener in their dreams (yume), giving it an exoticized immediacy: it is at once close at hand and far away. Though the listeners may not be able to inhabit the furusato physically, they need only to go to sleep to find it. As could be expected, enka’s audience is no more representative of the figures in its songs than their urban lifestyles are of its furusato imagery. “The characters that inhabit the enka world – bar hostesses, gangsters (yakuza), sailors – are today marginalized.” (Yano 2002, 15) In addition to the socially marginalized characters mentioned by Yano are the geographically marginal figures of the rice farmer or the fisherman. These characters in turn often end up – thanks to the “diffuse homelessness” endemic to urbanization as mentioned above – as migrants to urban centers, pining for their country homes and working low-paying, physically strenuous jobs. These subjects, however, are the same kind of blue-collar laborers seen in the rhetoric of the student radicals and their socialist protests. In fact, based on lyrics alone, it would be very difficult for most to tell whether folk singer Okabayashi Nobuyasu’s song “Sanya Blues” is of the

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folk or enka genre:

folk singers sing for a working class forever robbed of its rural past – the past they see Kyo no shigoto wa tsurakatta (Today’s work was only in their sake cups – enka singers aspainful) sert that such a past still exists even if only Ato wa shocho wo aoru dake (Afterwards, I’ll in enka music. By doing so, enka music in just gulp down some liquor) effect states that such a “Japan” is real: an Dose dose San’ya no doya zumai (In any case, imaginary place that exists truly in the enka I’ll live in the flophouses of San’ya) community’s collective emotional life. As Hoka ni yaru koto arya shinai (There’s nothing a result, the values of this past become a else to do) lived present, and the “Japan” proposed by Hitori sakaba de nomu sake ni (I miss the past I enka suddenly takes on the appearance of a can’t return to) community-wide furusato. As a way forward Kaeranu mukashi wa natsukashii (that I see in for society, enka proposes an ideological the sake I drink alone at a bar) furusato-zukuri that would create a nationNaite naite mitatte nan ni naru (I start to cry wide furusato, or Furusato Japan, to borrow and cry, what will become of me?) Robertson’s term. With twentieth century Ima ja San’ya ga furusato yo (For now, San’ya mass communications technology, furusato is my home) no longer need be a small mountain hamlet; instead, it can be disseminated across The tale it tells of a rural migrant to Tokyo all of Japan, becoming a shared emotional doing construction work – likely as a day-la- space among all Japanese that is mediated borer without permanent employment – is by the institution of enka. very similar to most tales of urban isolation It comes as no surprise, then, that enka found in enka. The key difference between today “has the reputation of a genre which the two genres is represented in the line “I appeals to blue-collar more than whitemiss the past I can’t return to that I see in collar workers, to rural-dwellers more than the sake I drink alone at a bar.” According urbanites.” (Yano 1997, 116) It would seem to Stevens, “Other kayokyoku [popular muthat the rural laborers over whom folk and sic] artists such as the Crazy Cats too poked enka battled for representation chose to lisjest at the new urban lifestyle, but returnten to music that positions them at the foreing to the countryside was never an option front of national furusato-zukuri, rather than for them; in contrast, enka singers sang of as being at the mercy of an exploitative an idealized Japanese rural life that was capitalist government. As a result, enka has always waiting for them.” (Stevens 2008, continued on in varying degrees of popu45) This is a very interesting statement larity to the present, whereas folk music when taken with Robertson’s concept of in the form that it took in the late ‘60s has furusato-zukuri as described above. Whereas largely faded from Japanese popular music. 78

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To be sure, both genres proposed visions of Japanese society that would require large-scale social change, but the more conservative enka, which held that “Japan” was already present within the hearts of its people, proved more attractive to the bluecollar audience whose old-fashioned values it extolled.

like Happy End, which was formed by the members of folk singer Okabayashi Nobuyasu’s backup band, consciously rejecting the messages of their predecessors’ music. (Bourdaghs 2005, 122) These bands viewed Japan as fully capable of standing in parity with the United States, in contrast to folk singers’ implicit assumptions that Japan held an inferior position after the oc The onset of 1970 in many ways cupation. It could even be argued that they signaled the end of the protest folk movemade these claims in a more “Japanese” ment and the student protest movement in manner; for while folk singers drew heavily general. The passage of a University Con- on American influence (even singing transtrol Law in July of the previous year placed lated versions of songs by artists like Bob increased pressure on universities to end Dylan), Stevens describes a “growing trend campus conflict quickly by giving the govin popular music” that took place over the ernment the option to take control of perlatter half of the twentieth century, one in sistently disrupted schools. By mid-1970, which musicians moved “from the West… student radicals had largely been quelled. to Japan as the source of inspiration of (Steinhoff 1999, 6) In the following decade, J-pop and rock” and eventually “defined Japan would witness the “ideological conitself as self referential, its own ‘source of version” of the student radicals, who would tradition.’” (Stevens 2008, 61) In a debate give up their dissident views and even try about Japanese identity which relied to a to hide that they ever had them in order large degree on appropriating images of to succeed in careers in the very capital“tradition,” this was an important transiist system they had decried. (Krauss 1974) tion for popular music to make if it hoped In the face of strengthening government to gain legitimacy. crackdowns and the prospect of losing their chance at a profitable career, many protes- The debate over the Japanese identors gave up. tity in the years following the end of the AlAlong with the student movement went lied Occupation was obviously one of critithe protest folk genre, which began to be cal importance if Japan was to move ahead viewed as overly polemical and, moreover, as an independent, self-sufficient country. out-of-touch with the working-class subIn the context of essentially one-party jects it sought to represent. Later popular rule by the reigning Liberal Democrats, music would take a more optimistic view however, it would not be a debate that was of what Japan was at present, with bands carried out in government. Rather, it was 2011

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waged by the Japanese people themselves, partly through the medium of popular music. The two “camps” that emerged were divided largely along generational lines, with the student protestors at Japanese universities promoting a Socialist image of Japan through folk music and middle-aged Japanese producing and listening to enka as a way of recreating their idea of Japanese traditional life. The artists operating in these genres reproduced and reinforced the images of Japan held by their listeners, at once shaping and shaped by their discourses. Interestingly, folk and enka performers used similar methods to promote their view of Japan. Both genres attempted to appeal to the working classes of Japanese society. These were the rural laborers many of whom moved to the cities to find industrial work - that appeared so frequently in the lyrics of singers at the time. Imagery of these workers was manufactured and performed by singers, highlighting either the ways in which the government took advantage of the workers, as in the folk songs of the students, or their longing for their furusato to emphasize the cultural “purity” of pre-modern Japan in enka. Eventually, it was to be enka that found more lasting traction with the Japanese people, and protest folk had faded by the end of the decade. The political implications of the Japanese people’s choice would be played out over the remainder of the twentieth century. Japan’s politics were markedly conserva80

tive in nature, leading to a stalling government when the economic bubble that had built throughout the ‘70s and ‘80s burst in the mid-90s. The forms of popular music that would arise in these decades, chief among them the genre of “idol pop,” were similarly conservative in their contents and, moreover, largely non-political. The 21st century, however, has been marked by a proliferation of non-mainstream musical forms. While these “indie” genres can trace their roots to the 1980s, it was not until the turn of the millennium that independent artists and labels began to multiply, perhaps due to the lowered cost of publicity afforded by the Internet. (Stevens 2008, 5859) Whether this is indicative of a changing political climate is yet unclear, but it is undeniable that popular music – far from being a politically toothless, purely commercial form – is often highly ideologically charged, and capable of galvanizing an entire generation.

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Whose Blues? Folk Music and ‘Enka’ in 1960s Japan

References

Beer, Lawrence W. “Japan, 1969: ‘My Homeism’ and Political Struggle.” Asian Survey. 10.1 (January 1970): 43-55. Bourdaghs, Michael. “What it Sounds Like to Lose an Empire: Happy End and the Kinks.” Perspectives on Social Memory in Japan. Ed. Yun Hui Tsu, Jan Van Bremen, and Eyal Ben-Ari. Kent: Global Oriental, 2005. 115-133. Goodman, Roger. “Sayonara America, Sayonara Nippon: Part Two (Kansai Folk and Japanese Rock).” Something America. December 14, 2010. Web. 8 Mar 2011. <http:// www.somethingamerica.us/blog/?p=417>. International Association for the Study of Popular Music. A Guide to Popular Music in Japan. Monograph, Takarazuka: International Association for the Study of Popular Music, 1991.

Stevens, Carolyn S. Japanese Popular Music: Culture, Authenticity, and Power. New York: Routledge, 2008. Tsurumi, Kazuko. “Some Comments on the Japanese Student Movements in the Sixties.” Journal of Contemporary History. 5.1 (1970): 104-112. Tsurumi, Kazuko. Student Movements in 1960 and 1969: Continuity and Change. Monograph, Tokyo: Sophia University, 1970. Yano, Christine R. “Inventing Selves: Images and Image Making in a Japanese Popular Music Genre.” Journal of Popular Culture. 31.2 (1997): 115-129. —. Tears of Longing: Nostalgia and the Nation in Japanese Popular Song. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002.

Krauss, Ellis S. Japanese Radicals Revisited: Student Protests in Postwar Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974. Robertson, Jennifer. “Furusato Japan: The Culture and Politics of Nostalgia.” International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society. 1. 4 (1988): 494-518. Steinhoff, Patricia G. “Student Protests in the 1960s.” Social Science Japan. 15 (1999): 3-6. 2011

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The Obama and Bush Presidencies and North Korea: Continuity We Can Believe in Terence Hsieh Abstract: Despite some differences between the Bush administration and the Obama administration’s handling of foreign policy issues with North Korea, both of the administrations operated with strikingly similar rhetoric. During the Bush administration, neoconservative ideology supported the adoption of a preventive war policy. Furthermore, Bush’s “Axis of Evil” speech categorized Iran, North Korea, and Iraq as nations that were affiliated with terrorists, hence reversing any advances the Clinton administration had made towards healthy international relations. Although President Obama’s 2008 campaign was built on an “anything but Bush” attitude, President Obama has, for the most part, seemed to continue Bush’s policies towards North Korea. The difference lies in the fact that Obama’s administration denounces North Korea’s government as tyrannical while also opening a possible door to diplomacy. This article compares in much detail the relative policies of Bush and Obama, and looks to the future impact of such policies on regional ties in Asia and the possibility of constructive dealings with North Korea.

Introduction The Obama campaign was built on an “anything but Bush” policy. That is, “change” from the policies of the past eight years was the overall theme in regards to the Presidency. So what explains the similarities of policy between the Bush and Obama administrations in foreign policy, especially in dealing with North Korea and East Asia? For one, the rhetoric is strikingly similar: John Bolton, then Undersecretary of State said in March 2004 that: “[we] will not provide inducements or reward the North Koreans to come back into compliance with their international obligations”

(Klingner) This is later echoed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a speech in July 2009: “We do not intend to reward North Korea just for returning to the table, nor do we intend to reward them for actions they have already committed to taking” (Ibid). The comparisons go on. In order to understand this phenomenon, I will discuss the continuous policies of the Obama and Bush administrations—that the Obama administration had few choices of action but to continue the Bush administrations policies in dealing with North Korea. In order to discuss the similarities and differences in policies between the

Terence Hsieh is a senior at Oberlin College where he is pursuing a double-degree in East Asian Studies and Jazz Performance. He is the President of the Global China Connect Oberlin Chapter.

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President Barack Obama administrations and the George W. Bush administration, I have found it necessary to divide the past nine years into four periods: (1) Bush’s first term, (2) Bush’s second term, (3) the “Lame Duck” period that took place between the President Bush egression and the President Obama election, and (4) approximately one year of the Obama administration. It is also necessary to discuss the cause-andeffect relationship between North Korean and US policy. Finally, it is important to discuss how the regional setting and context has left few doors open to other options of dealing with North Korea. First Movement: Policy Expectations and Realities of Both Bush Administrations The Bush Administration’s First Term and Preemption: Forcing the DPRK’s Hand To better understand the Bush Administration’s motivation behind foreign policy towards North Korea, it is important that we distinguish between the two very different political frameworks under which the Bush Administration operated in terms of foreign policy in Asia. Despite these differences, it is clear that vital domestic and foreign policy concerns played a role in their decision. Ivo H. Daalder, Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institute describes the first Bush Administration’s 2011

foreign policy as “cowboy diplomacy,” a fiercely unilateral approach to foreign politics . This willingness to go it alone was also accompanied by unique strategy. David Sanger, political analyst of the New York Times writes: “President Bush has never made apologies for enshrining pre-emption as the defining doctrine of his first term” (Sanger). President Bush’s National Security Strategy of clearly delineates this option of preemption: “The United States has long maintained the option of preemptive actions to counter a sufficient threat to our national security.” Neoconservative ideology had a major impact on the Bush Administration and its decision to adopt the policy of preemptive war. Many of these individuals within the Administration had served under Reagan and the Former President Bush during the Cold War and The Gulf War, including Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and John Bolton. The Neoconservative school of thought generally follows Reagan Cold War ideology with the perception that victory (in this case, against the Soviet Union) comes from hard-line stances towards rogue states. Additionally, neoconservatives view the world in binary terms of good and evil. Neoconservatives differ from Reagan–era policy makers about how to handle asymmetric threats; while Reagan-era advisors posit that containment was successful in keeping communism out, neoconservatives believe that the only way to deter religious extremism in the United States is to play a

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stronger hand by forcefully suppressing or invading.

war.

Furthermore, in 2003, when the In the aftermath of September 11th, United States attacked and invaded Iraq, these policies strengthened the domestic one can see how the North Koreans would support of the Bush administration. In have perceived the consequences of inacterms of the conflict between hard liners tion. The DPRK made it clear that redouand moderates in Washington, it should be bling its efforts to arm itself with nuclear sufficient to say that the hard line neoconweapons was a self-defense move to protect servatives, whom advocated a tough “all itself from US aggression, an outcome that sticks” policy of tough sanctions and unilat- Former President Clinton had fought hard eral action, gained the upper hand in wag- to avoid. ing policy as a result of the terrorist attacks. These policies had significant effects on North Korea’s attempts at diplomacy East Asia as well. The Bush Doctrine worwere rebuked by the Bush administraried many of the Asian powers, including tion, which called any form of negotiation China, Japan, Taiwan, North Korea and “blackmail” (Sanger). Soon after, in 2005, South Korea, whose regional security relied North Korea announced that it had poson the stability of bilateral alliances, many session of a nuclear arsenal. This would of which linked directly back to the United prove to be a thorn in the side of the Bush States. administration for the rest of his presidency. The neoconservatives had failed to see that For North Korea, the newly defined a hard line stance towards North Korea rules of preemption and being accused of would only encourage its leaders to make sponsoring terrorism in President Bush’s progress on a nuclear weapon. “Axis of Evil” speech in early 2002, months before North Korea declared it had nuclear The Second Term and “Multilateral Diplomacy” weapons, were both direct threats to North Korea’s national security. Bush’s speech Many critics see the Bush administracategorized Iran, North Korea, and Iraq tion’s second term as a turning point in the as nations that were affiliated with terrorist international politics of the administration, groups. This effectively reversed any progespecially towards East Asia. What factors ress that the Clinton administration had contributed to the decision to change 180 made. It is clear that the North saw this as degrees? justification for invasion. Korea quickly developed a terse and angry response, declar- At this point, there were few options ing the speech and doctrine to be an act of available to the United States in terms of 84

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dealing with North Korea. Having potentially developed a full (albeit small) nuclear arsenal, North Korea presented a huge obstacle in the security of the region and the world. The neoconservative policy of hard line pressure and sanctions had failed to solve the nuclear crisis. Instead of forcing the North Koreans to disarm, they had encouraged them to play their hand. Anthony DiFillipo posits that: “The Bush administration’s failure to resolve the security problems with the countries that the president had earlier identified as constituting an “axis of evil” left it little choice but to seek a major success in foreign policy that would improve the president’s damaged legacy.” Additionally, there is empirical evidence that UN economic sanctions on North Korea, after their first nuclear test, had no effect on trade between the DPRK and its primary economic partners: China and South Korea (Noland). Ivo Daalder writes: “the Iraq debacle, and a more sober appreciation of the cost and consequences of using force against Iran and North Korea, has put military defeat beyond even America’s reach” (Daalder). That is, the Bush administration came to the realization that neoconservative hard line policy of non-negotiation and unilateral action would not solve the North Korean crisis and furthermore could not be supported by military force because the American military was already stretched thin. 2011

came to a crossroads. Instead of spearheading a policy of unilateral cowboy diplomacy, a new approach to North Korea was defined (or forced). Despite bellicose rhetoric from both sides, North Korea and the United States agreed to discuss the framework of Six Party Talks. It should be sufficient to say that there was significant progress during this time period. Second Movement: Obama and Great Expectations The Lame Duck Period: The Expectations This section is about the general expectations about what would have happened under the Obama administration and the major differences in the party ideologies of the Bush administration and the Obama administration. It is important to observe the difference in Obama’s foreign relation ideologies and Bush’s foreign relation ideologies. While the Bush administration was characterized by unilateral take-no-prisoners cowboy diplomacy, the Obama campaign took on a constructivist ideology: Reconcile differences in culture and society and by being “global citizens,” in order to stabilize. Obama’s constructivist ideology is evident in his Cairo speech. It seems that Obama would have radically altered the way in which foreign policy was conducted.

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Bruce Klingner, Senior Research Fellow for the Northeast Asia Heritage Foundation posits that directly after the election, “the dominant view in Washington and Seoul was…The change in US leadership would lead North Korea to feel less threatened and, therefore, it would abandon its policy of provocations” (Klingner). Essentially, these expectations towards the North Koreans were relatively unfounded, as there was little success from the campaign rhetoric in altering the relationship between Iran and the United States. Obama: Continuity We Can Believe in

tyranny and poverty across the border to the North,” she remarked in February 2009 (The BBC). Condoleeza Rice had used similar words in her speech denouncing North Korea as a tyranny during the first Bush Administration. If looking only at the rhetoric, it would seem that there was a complete reversal after the past four years. While it took the Bush administration nearly all of their first four years to realize that dialogue was the only route that would yield any concessions from the North Koreans, “Mrs. Clinton’s words were a stern warning to Pyongyang, making clear that while the new administration may be ready to explore new strategies, there will be no softening of tone” (Ibid). Essentially the Obama administration had begun to squeeze North Korea in one hand, while holding an open door in the other.

While North Koreans were wary of domestic upheaval from the presidential elections, they were willing to sit back and wait. For several months, relations with the North were relatively free of confrontation and belligerent rhetoric. However, on the eve of the North’s missile launch of the Sea Finale or Fugue: Repetition or A of Japan(East Sea) in April, 2009, it beNew Page? came evident that the Northerners were not willing to sit on their heels forever. So what does this all mean? Actions from the North resulted in reactions from The Obama administration issued the United States that have been relatively rhetoric that was quite controversial to the similar all along despite of different presiNorth Korea. On her visit to Asia, Secredencies. Although the Bush administration tary of State Hillary Clinton denounced may have taken longer to get it right, the North Korea and declared that alliances end result was that the US and North Koneeded to be strengthened, implying that rea sat down at the table for negotiations. these alliances stood against rogue states Under the Obama administration, use of like North Korea. This rhetoric was fahard line moralist rhetoric against North miliar: “South Korea’s prosperity and Korea has been generally accompanied democracy stood in stark contrast to the with reminders that the US is willing to dis86

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cuss and sit down at the table, even bilaterally. Upon examining the opinions of the authoritative experts in the field of international relations, the only reasonable methods for dealing with North Korea that could have been proposed are few and far between. Generally speaking, experts agree that pressing North Korea while maintaining negotiations is the only acceptable route to progress. Why? At this point, the fall of North Korea would be the worst scenario, as there is little that any side can do to prevent the pilfering and proliferation of nuclear facilities. Hard line economic sanctions could lead to rash behavior, such as firing nuclear weapons. However, completely caving into North Korea’s demands would result in severe instability for the entire region. There are few routes of action that any administration, republican or democrat, can take in solving the North Korea nuclear crisis. Furthermore, it is true that policies from these two administrations have been limited to these options. David Sanger writes: “Mr. Obama vowed to “take action” in response to what he called “a blatant violation of international law” … but as they had meetings every few hours… some of Mr. Obama’s aides acknowledged that the administration’s options were limited.” David Kang argues in a Special Roundtable advising President Obama on Asia Relations that the US should “give a Little To Get A Lot From North Korea... North Korea will not give something for 2011

nothing. Pyongyang responds to external pressure with pressure of its own.” Bruce Klingner argues for “punitive sanctions, strengthening of defensive measures, and keeping the door open for negotiations.” All in all, experts put forward the same idea, bundled in a slightly different package. In summary, after 9/11, the Bush administration declared their intentions to unilaterally and preemptively strike wherever they thought asymmetric threats might exist to the United States, subsequently linked Iran, Iraq, and the DPRK together as harbors of terrorism and invaded Iraq, per hard line neoconservative ideology. This worried and angered North Korea, causing them to restart their nuclear reactor in self-defense and prompting the United States to continue hard line sanctions. After a considerably longer tenure in the Middle East than anticipated, with few military personnel to spare, and with declining popularity, President Bush turned to a new policy of negotiations and concessions, agreeing to sit down at the table with North Korea within the Six Party framework. Here, progress was made. Most experts saw the inauguration of Obama as a potentially ground-shaking upheaval that would change the relationship with North Korea. However, after coming to office, the Obama administration publicly denounced North Korea, causing some crossfire between the two, but also indicated that it was still ready to negotiate, denoting

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The Obama and Bush Presidensies and North Korea: Continuity We Can Believe In

the possibility of sending a special envoy to stances towards East Asia and particularly North Korea and creating opportunity for towards the Democratic People’s Republic North Korea to enter the global community of Korea of its own will. Conclusions

References:

Whether policy defines the regional framework or framework defines policy, remains as one of the greatest unsolved theoretical issues in International Relations. If we are to assume that states are capable of acting irrationally—that is, capable of ignoring the circumstances of their regional and global context, then we can conclude that policy might define history. However, if we are to assume that states act rationally, then, regional setting and global context do affect a states judgment—issues like maintaining or elevating economic status or extinguishing other threats to a states power. Klingner concludes that: “Despite the perception of a major shift in U.S. policy, Obama was going to face the same constraints in achieving tangible progress with Pyongyang. After all, during the last two years of the Bush administration it had already engaged in the direct, bilateral diplomacy with Pyongyang that Obama advocated” (Klingner) If this is believed to be true, one can argue that history defines policy, perhaps more than we would like to admit. In my paper I have argued the latter — that the Obama and Bush Administrations, led by two distinctly different leaders with uniquely different outlooks on foreign relations, have promoted similar political

Klingner, Bruce. “North Korea’s Nuclear and Missile Threats.” Institute for Korean American Studies, Inc. Oct 2009.

Daalder, Ivo H. “Has Bush Gone Multilateral.” Brookings Institute. 11 July 2006. Sanger, David. “Bush’s Shift, Being Patient With Foes.” The New York Times. 10 July 2006. Sanger, David E. “North Korea Says it Now Possesses Nuclear Arsenal.” The New York Times. 25 Apr 2003. DiFillipo, Anthony. “Collateral Damage.” Korea Times. Noland, Marcus. “The (Non) Impact of UN Sanctions on North Korea.” Asia Policy 7 (February 2009). “Clinton Urges N Korean Dialogue.” The BBC. 2009. Sanger, David. “Tested Early By North Korea, Obama Has Few Options.” The New York Times. May 2009. Kang, David G. “Give A Little To Get A Lot From North Korea, Special Roundtable Advising The President.” Asia Policy 7 (February 2009).

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Treasures from Population Registers in Nagasaki Hirado-cho Youjia Li Abstract: A pre-modern Japanese population register in Nagasaki known as Hirado-cho ninbetsu seisho tadashi from the year of Kan’ei 19 (1642) offers rich information on religion and geography of the time. The record reveals the patterns of Christian apostasy for individuals, as well as the trading environment and associated migrations in Nagasaki in the seventeenth century. In so doing, it also verifies and supplements what has been studied thus far about Nagasaki Christianity and foreign relations. A micro perspective of ordinary people and their lives reflected in the record provides a profounder comprehension of Nagasaki, which was the frontier to a modern Japan. Born in Nagasaki, Yokose Magouemon became a Christian from his childhood. He went to Edo in 1627, spent six years there, apostatized and became a Jodo Buddhist. During the tenure of Soga Matasaemon (1633 ), he went back to Nagasaki and claimed his religious affiliation to Oonji, a temple of the Jodo sect. His parents were originally Chinese, who were captured by pirate and brought to Nagasaki, becoming Christians upon their arrivals. Because of his Christian history and his six-year experience in Edo, he was investigated by the ward officials, and was required to provide a guarantor with a certificate recorded by the community. Population Register of Nagasaki Hirado-cho (Nagasaki Hirado-cho ninbetsu cho)

The above story was documented in a population record in Nagasaki’s Hiradocho (a neighborhood in Nagasaki). Along with it, 225 other cases are collected in the same population register known as Hiradocho ninbetsu seisho tadashi, compiled in the year of Kan’ei 19 (1642). This document presents a narrative of personal histories for every person registered. Each narrative follows a story-line including information such as (1) age and birthplace, (2) migration to Nagasaki, (3) time and place of baptism and apostate, (4) Buddhist sects and affiliated temple, (5) birthplace and migrations of parents, (6) parents’ religious history, and (7) time, place, and religious state upon the

deaths of parents or their current locations if living. Providing more than a demographic facade, this register reveals critical social and religious information on an individual level. However, only two articles by Japanese scholars feature the Hirado population registers thus far. Few studies in English have ever cited this population register, and even fewer have brought out the rich information it contains. This essay thus attempts to extract religious and geographical information from the Hirado-cho population register in order to examine the patterns of Christian apostasy for individuals, as well

Youjia Li is an East Asian Studies M.A. student at Yale University. She holds a doublebachelor’s degree in International Politics from Peking University and Waseda University. 2011

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as the trading environment and associated migrations in Nagasaki in the seventeenth century.

every household. The Hirado population register is one such local investigation documents. The existing files include records in 1634 (Kan’ei 11), 1635 (Kan’ei 12), 1637 Historians have a consensus that Ja(Kan’ei 14), 1641 (Kan’ei 18), 1642 (Kan’ei pan had a “Christian Century” from 1549 19), 1651 (Kei’an 4), and 1659 (Manji 2). to 1639. However, as the historian George From the Shimbara Rebellion in 1637, the Elison stated, the acceptance of Christian- registers began to include age information ity in Japan was “a peculiar phenomenon as well, in addition to names (mostly of of the disjointed polity of Sengoku.” After the head of the household and servants, as the establishment of the Tokugawa bakufu, names of wives were excluded), relationthe anti-Christianity policy by Toyotomi ships (parent-children, conjugal and serHideyoshi (1537-1598) was extended. From vant relationships), and Buddhist sects and 1633 to 1636, the bakufu issued four edicts temples. However, only the records of 1642 prohibiting of the return of all Japanese na- contain personal narratives such as the ones tionals and ships abroad, as well as restrict- as mentioned above. ing on Portuguese traders and Christians. A final edict, which was issued in 1639 after In this essay, I will utilize extractable the two-year Shimabara Rebellion, ended information especially from the documents the Portuguese trade and all Japanese traf- of ninbetsu seisho tadashi of 1642, to verify or fic with Catholic lands. These are known supplement what has been studied thus far as the Sakoku Edicts, the policy of “closing about Nagasaki Christianity and foreign the country”. relations. In so doing, I will take a micro perspective of ordinary people and their The records collected in 1642 are lives as revealed through the population just a part of the preserved population reg- registers, and thereby reach a profounder isters in Nagasaki Hirodo-cho, collectively comprehension of Nagasaki, the frontier to known as Hirado-cho ninjyu aratame no cho. a modern Japan. Motivated by the same concerns as those behind the issuing of the Sakoku Edicts, Family Portraits the Tokugawa bakufu invented the shumon aratame in 1638 as an anti-Christianity reli- Due to its detailed migratory and gious investigation system. It required each familial information about Christian aposJapanese person to provide the local magis- tates, Hirado cho record resulted in its distrate with proof of membership in a Budtinct structure as well. From the household dhist temple and a seal of the local temple unit, the immigration information could to attest to the absence of Christians in provide a picture of the contemporary reli90

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Treasures from Population Registers in Nagasaki-Hirado-cho

gious atmosphere. (1)

Geography of Religion

Nagasaki Hirado-cho had a population intimately connected to Christianity: of the total 226 registered villagers, 121 used to be Christians, and 105 claimed to always have been Buddhists (the count only applied for those officially registered, and excluded their relatives mentioned in their statements). Among the local Nagasaki and Hirado people, only 30 claimed to be originally Buddhists, while the remaining 63 people were Christian apostates. In the case of Nagasaki immigrants, 40 of them became Christians after they moved to Nagasaki, 18 people had already been

baptized before they came, and 19 gave up their Christian beliefs before their arrival in Nagasaki. As for Buddhism, 96 immigrants claimed originally to be Buddhist (Ganrai) and to have always remained in the same sect, while in eight cases of transitions between Buddhist sects and one case of a Korean woman who became a Jodokyo Buddhist (Pure Land sect) upon her arrival in Hirado at the age of seven (she was the only Korean who was not a Christian). Apparently, Hirado was a ward featuring a relatively large immigrant population with an immigrant percentage of 61.5%, almost half of whom were Christians (apostates). Herein is revealed an intimate relationship between Nagasaki and the spread of Christianity in pre-modern Japan. When it came

Immigration and Religion (Table 1) Christians (apos% of % of Num. Buddhists Num. tates) pop. pop. Local Nagasaki Local Nagasaki 57 25.22% 30 13.27% people people Christian immiGanrai Buddhist grants upon arrival 34 15.04% 66 29.20% immigrants at Nagasaki Christian ImmiTransition 22 9.73% 8 3.54% grants between sects Christian ImmigraBuddhist after tions who aposta8 3.54% imigration to 1 0.44% tized before immiNagasaki gration Total Christian im28.32% Total Buddhist 33.19% 64 75 (53.96%)* migrants (46.04%)* Immigrants

2011

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Christians (aposNum. tates) Total Christians

121

% of pop. 53.54%

Total Immigrants Total Population

Buddhists Total Buddhist Immigrants 139 (61.50%) 226

Num.

% of pop.

33.19% (53.96%)*

* Percentile of total immigrants

some of the places were also famous locales of Christianity conversion in East Asia. Amakawa, for example, was the Japanese name for Macao, one of the busiest trading ports within reach of Nagasaki and Starting with this general picture, further conclusions can be arrived at by cat- also another place historically occupied by Portuguese Jesuit missionaries. egorizing the geographical information of those Nagasaki immigrants. Firstly, taking The next step is to analyze the comonly the registered people into account, it reveals basic information on Christian con- bination of birthplaces and parental religions. It unfolds a picture that includes a versions; secondly, by adding the parental variety of locations. Additionally, there are information stated in personal narratives, a number of cases, in which either the parfurther speculations can be made on the ents or the registered villagers themselves geography of religion. converted to Christianity upon their arrival To start with, there were nine places in Nagasaki, as shown in Table 3. This is where the people of Hirado were baptized another piece of evidence suggestive of the distinctive religious environment in Naga(only those explicitly stated were counted here). Among them, Nagasaki was the most saki. popular place, recorded in 34 cases, and These two statistical findings largely Omura the second most popular. Both were active trading ports in sixteenth- and seven- coincide with what Ikegami Takasho had teenth-century Japan. However, fewer cases found in his article Nagasaki Hirado-Cho Ni Miru Shukyo Jijyo. By using a series of simiof baptisms in other places do not necessarily indicate a lower level in the diffusion lar data, he made a general argument that the opportunities to that came to Nagasaki of Christianity, since there is no evidence that it is not because of the lack of popula- were very likely to be critical life transition movement from those places or simply tions for ordinary Japanese people. In some cases, the intention to become a Christian the lack of statistical information. Besides, to the â&#x20AC;&#x153;closing period,â&#x20AC;? it was also among the core areas severely impacted, as reflected in the population registers.

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Treasures from Population Registers in Nagasaki-Hirado-cho

might even be one of the motivations to move to Nagasaki. According to Ikegami, the Places of Christian Conversion (Table 2) Places Number Places Number

Nagasaki 34 Takaki 2

Omura 21 Yagami 2

rapid spread of Christianity could be attributed to a shrewd evangelical plan, which predominantly targeted wealthy peasants, and was further facilitated by a church organization, which was similar to existing community groups in Japan . Ikegami also

Amakusa 5 Takahama 1

Shimabara 3 Amakawa 1

Mogi 2 Total 70

points out that as Christianity went hand in hand with trading interests, conversions to Christianity might not always have been motivated purely by religious intentions, especially in highly commercialized areas like Nagasaki. In Sengoku Japan especially, the

Birthplace of Christian Immigrants (Table 3) Kyushu Region RegisRegisNagasaki tered Parents Other Places Parents tered InPrefecture Individudividuals als Hirado 1 8 Hizen 4 3 (Saga Omura 1 0 Karatsu 1 0 PrefecKabashiture) Fukahori 1 0 2 0 ma Takaki 1 0 Chikugo 3 4 Isahaya 3 1 Higo (Kuma2 0 moto Goto 0 1 Amakusa Prefec2 0 ture) Iki 1 1 Buzen (Fukuoka 0 1 PrefecHakata 1 4 ture) Outside of Kyushu Region Mimasaka 1 0 Kyo (Kyoto) 2 3 Hyogo 0 1 Ymaguchi 1 0 2011

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Korea Total

Foreign Country 7 China Parents Registered Individuals

0 36 34

fresh scene brought by Christianity might offer new social and economic opportunities to its believers, benefiting them not just from a religious perspective.

observe the filial and conjugal relationships reflected in the population register.

Ikegami’s arguments about the early popularity of Christianity are buttressed by George Elison in his book, Deus Destroyed. Based on anti-Christianity literature and historical textual analysis, Elison also recognized the counterstroke of Christianity towards Buddhism, which was induced by missionaries’ powerful condemnation of the Buddhists’ “sectarianism and lack of a unified doctrine [which] facilitated the introduction and spread of the rigorous Christian faith”.

By dividing all the villagers into age groups, some interesting facts help to reveal the underlying relationship between state policy and individual life. Despite slightly different details, the counting conducted by Ikegami and the results of my research (as shown in Table 4) shared a common factor: nobody from the age group of 1~15 years of age were ever baptized. In other words, nobody was baptized after the year 1628. Juxtaposing important events of Japanese pre-modern Christianity, this was precisely the generation that was born right before the implementation of the first Sakoku Edict. Parental influence is a critical reason among possible explanations. A natural speculation would be that a proportion of the Ganrai Buddhists were actually younger generations of apostatized Christians. This assumption is certified by a further counting. Among all Ganrai Buddhist, there were 29 registered who had a Christian apostate for at least one parent. Taking their personal narratives into account, 13 Buddhists mentioned that their parents used to be Christians but chose to abandon

Nevertheless, Elison’s book features the negative effects of Christianity. Generally speaking, those effects included the shortages of missionary personnel and Japanese priests, the incompatibility of Japan’s highly particularized feudal loyalties with Christianity’s demands of superior loyalty to the One God, and most significantly, the political involvement of missionaries which was necessary but eventually brought about the later indictment of the Christians. Following the narrative that Elison provides, it encourages a closer scrutiny of the spreading of Christianity at the familial level: to 94

(2)

Parent-Child Relationships

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their beliefs under political pressures. Compared to the relatively small number of children who followed their mothers’ religion, the fact that there were 10 cases of people who followed their fathers’ religion stands out, even though it is not safe to simply attribute it to a superiority of patriarchal power. On the other hand, it is also noteworthy that a considerable proportion of the register narratives describes the mother’s situation ahead of the father’s, even in some cases where the situations of both parents are identical. Despite of the absence of studies addressing

this particular issue, there is research with similar findings—for example, Morimoto Kazuhiko observed the family system as reflected by the earliest population registers in central Japan. Morimoto unearths cases where children chose to inherit positions in their mothers’ family temples instead of their fathers’. The inconsistency within the family could be explained by a variety of reasons given different situations. According to the date here, there is an interesting religious nature between the relationship of mothers-daughters and fathers-sons. In cases where there was a Buddhist mother and

Age Distribution on Religion & Corresponding Japanese Christiany Chronicle (Table 4) Age 1-5 6-10 11-15 16-20 21-25 26-30 31-35 36-40 41-45 46-50 51-55 56-60 61-65 66-70 71-75 80-95 81-85 Total 2011

Birth Year 1642-1638 1637-1633 1632-1628 1627-1623 1622-1618 1617-1613 1612-1608 1607-1603 1602-1598 1597-1593 1592-1588 1587-1583 1582-1578 1577-1573 1572-1568 1567-1563 1562-1558 1557-1553

Ganrai 17 16 22 6 5 12 4 7 3 4 5 2 3 0 1 0 0 105

Christian 0 0 0 14 15 13 13 18 5 7 8 14 2 2 6 1 1 121

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Total 17 16 22 20 20 25 17 25 8 11 13 16 5 2 7 1 1 226 95

Youjia Li

Japanese Christianity Chronicle 1639 Final Sakoku Edict: end of Portugese trade Sakoku Edict I-IV, 1637 Shimabara Rebellion 1623 the Great Martyrdom in Edo 1622 the Great Martyrdom in Nagasaki 1613 the English establish a trading factory in Hirado 1609 the Dutch establish a trading factory in Hirado 1603 Establishment of the Tukogawa Bakufu 1599 Tokugawa Ieyasu allows the Franciscans in Edo 1597 Martyrdom of the Twenty-Six Saints of Japan 1592 Hideyoshi’s armies invade Korea 1587 Hideyoshi’s practice restricting/expelling Christianity 1580 Omura Sumitada cedes Nagasaki to the Society of Jesus 1571 Nagasaki becomes the terminal of Portugese trade 1563 Omura Sumitada baptized 1562 permission of Jesuit to preach in Omura 1549 Inception of Christian mission Christian father, both of the Ganrai Buddhists children were daughters; in families with Buddhists fathers and Christian mothers, 9 cases were sons, including 7 registered children and 2 mentioned in personal narratives. Only one case is a Ganrai Buddhists daughter. Admittedly, the sample cited here is too small to make any assertions. However, it is interesting to discern the pattern that daughters tended to follow their mothers’ religions while sons followed their fathers’. The inconsistency itself would be an interesting angle from which to examine the power structure in pre-modern families. In attempting to further examine how parent-child relationships influenced religious choices, it is necessary to explore detail in the following ways: firstly, how 96

many parent and children claimed to share the same religion in the registers, and how many took different religious paths; secondly, to examine the timing in the latter cases in order to propose possible reasons as explanations. Not surprisingly, of a total of 121 Christian apostates in Hirado in the year of 1642, 77 of them had identical religions as their parents, while 69 out of 105 Buddhists shared the same beliefs within the family. The more intriguing cases, however, are the ones in which family members had distinct faiths. In explaining cases with Buddhists parents and Christian children, two reasons are most reasonable. First, the death of parents at a very young age might cut off the religion influence between parents and

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Ganrai Buddhists with Christian Apostate Parents (Table 5) Christian F-Ch & Apostates* M-B** 19 1 (daughter)

Registered Children Mentioned in 11 Narratives 30 Total

Total

1 (daughter)

F-B & M-Ch*** 8 (7 sons, 1 daughter) 2 (both sons)

29 13

* Had a Christian Apostate for at least one parent explicitly stated ** Christian Father and Buddhist Mother *** Buddhist Father and Christian Mother

their Christian faiths, was documented as a Ganrai Buddhist. Zenuemon, as another example, was the son of a Christian couple, who also had an older Christian son and a twelve-year Ganrai Buddhist son, Shichibei. Although far from being representative cases, these situations portray vividly how policy could have substantial impact on the basic family unit. The Japanese historian Yajima Yukata has also conducted similar research. He focuses mainly on the Genroku era, in the middle of the Tokugawa The religious differentiation within period. He has compiled all Christian famthe family also provides evidence on how ily cases in the Christian Family registers the enforced Christian apostasy interacted (Kirishitan ruizokucho) in Nagasaki, Hirado, on a micro level within concrete family Omura, and Hisashima. A novelty of his lives. Two typical cases are noteworthy studies is the utilization of judicial records, here. Osakaya Yauemon (age 58), a merchant from Kyoto, came to Hirado in 1615 the guarantor documents of prisoners that and became a Christian. His Nagasaki wife were preserved by the Goningumi, which is consistent with the guarantor system re(age 45) and their first son Aatasanemon vealed in the registers in Hirado, which is (23) were both apostate Christians by the year 1642. However, his second son Yashiro discussed in the final part of this paper. (12), who was born three years before the (3) Conjugal Relationships issue of the first Sakoku Edict and most likely after the whole family had abandoned children. Some children, like Hisauemon, whose parents both died of disease when he was a child, received Christian baptism immediately upon arrival in Nagasaki Omuracho. Another explanation may be because of an early migration that separated family members. Maki, a maid in the household of Jinbee Goke, left her Zen Buddhist parents and came to Nagasaki at the age of 11, where she became a Christian immediately.

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Identical Religions between Parents and Children (Table 6) Absolute Number Christian Buddhist

77 67+2*

Percentage of Same Religion 63.64% 65.71%

* The two cases were from different Buddhist Sects

Different Religions between Parents and Children (Table 7) Christian (apostates) Children Buddhist Children

Buddhist Parents F-Ch & M-B M-Ch & F-B Christian Parents F-Ch & M-B M-Ch & F-B

Is there any evidence of spousal influence on each otherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s religious choices? In 1993, G. William Skinner argued that the relative age differences between husband and wife might turn out to be as critical as a life or death matter . Given the assumption that Japanese husbands were generally older than their wives, Skinner argues that larger the gap between the couple, the more likely the husband had a dominating power over his wife; in converse cases, wives would enjoy a higher level of autonomy. Skinnerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s examination is limited to the reproduction choices within the family, as well as the longevity of individuals. However, it is also worthwhile to try to apply a similar logic in observing the marriage patterns in Hirado-cho in the context of Christian apostasy.

18 1 3 9 1 3

Among a total of 35 couples the average age difference for husbands who were older than their wives is 7.12 years. In three cases, wives were older than their husbands respectively in a gap of 2, 10, and 17 years. Dividing by religious beliefs and calculating the age gap between them, the results are shown in Table 8. As is evident from this table, a high percentage of couples had identical faiths, even though they might not necessarily adopt them simultaneously or apostatize at the same time. As in the cases of different religions, no assertions can be drawn on whether a certain religion had superiority in a family with the large social context, and thus one could not speculate about the nature of a relative power between the couples. However, it is interesting to see

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the four couples with Buddhist husbands and Christian wives. Despite the fact that husbands were on average 9.16 years older than their wives, the wives still chose to be Christians. Moreover, besides the one who apostatized in 1599, three others did not apostatize until the tenure of the Nagasaki magistrate, Takenaka Uneme from 1629 to 1633. The religious inconsistency, either for Christianity or Buddhism, within the same family may indicate the fluid sense of religious belonging in the seventeenth century as Ikegami similarly proposed in his article. Ikegami argues that the religious immaturity eventually results in an easier acceptance of Christianity when it started to spread. Limited by available sources, no academic literature further verify to his statement. However, at least there are also no counter-facts to his argument based on what has been analyzed above. Therefore, in a sensible way, the inconsistency in beliefs and the immaturity of religion, if any, may also lead to a large apostate presence that is discernable from the population register, with only three “stubborn” Christian cases, at least statistically, which I will presently discuss. Trading Environment and International Relations: Case Studies The Hirado population register also offers fascinating perspectives into the judicial system and trading environments 2011

in seventeenth-century Japan. I will first discuss some interesting cases, in which a special guarantor system was needed for apostates were foreigners. Among all 121 Christian apostates cases, 10 happened during the time the bugyo (magistrate) Mizuno Kawachinokami supervised Nagasaki. 82 of them gave up Christian beliefs during the reign of bugyo Takenaka Uneme. When a Christian refused to abandon his or her connection to God, the officials in Nagasaki would take them to a prison beside a hot-spring mountain called Unzen Jikoku, where they were tortured in the boiling spring water until they apostatized. The whole process was documented in the population register simply as “yamairi”, which means “going into the mountains,” and only three cases this expression. One of the cases appears in the narrative of the wife of Shouemon. Her Christian parents were sent to the mountain as a punishment for their stubbornness, where her mother died retaining her belief as a Christian. Her father, on the other hand, eventually converted to Zen Buddhisms and returned to the town. The other two cases were quite international. The wife, aged 68, was originally from Korea, and her arrival in Japan was speculated to be the result of the abduction of Korean as slaves during Hideyoshi’s invasion of Korea in 1592 and 1598. The husband grew up in the town of Hirado, a port to the north of Nagasaki. Both of them underwent the “yamairi” punishment and eventually

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Conjugal Relationships in Religious Context (Table 8) Religious Condition

Number

Both Christians Both Buddhists Hus-Ch & W-B** Hus-B & W-Ch*** Total

20+1* 9 1 4 35

Average of years by which the husband is older 7.19 7.15 0 9.16 7.12

* Including a case of a widow who included her husband’s basic information in the document ** Husband as Christian apostates, Wife as Buddhist *** Husband as Buddhist, Husband as Christian apostate

became Zen Buddhists. A noteworthy fact is that in the register, after the end of the personal records, an unusual remark is also documented alongside with their narratives. It states, “because of the stain of the refusal to apostatize as well as the fact that the wife was from Korea, a special certificate was made and a merit guarantor was appointed”.

a Christian church, a guarantor was needed and documented as well.

Meanwhile, the register also provides valuable information on people’s movements, domestically and internationally, on an individual level. Trade was one of the primary reason of the population movement. The very first name of this population register, Ishimoto Shinbee, was This system of guarantors was ema representative merchant who moved to bedded in the Goningumi, the five-family Nagasaki at the age of fourteen with a clear neighborhood associates, which is a comcommercial intention when Nagasaki took munity group of collective responsibility. her initial step as a Portuguese trading port. All records of the seven Koreans in Hirado, In 1639, he became an officially recognized regardless of their religion, were documerchant in dealing with inter-domain mented with an identical expression inditrade, utilizing his connections with Satcating the existence of guarantors. There is suma domain and taking an active part in another distinctive case that shares a similar the trade with the Ryukyu islands. Several remark. Born in Omura, the 40-year-old people who were originally from Kyoto and Kamiya Denbeei came to Nagasaki at the Sakai, two of the most prosperous commerage of three, and from the age of nine becial cities at that time, had a similar comcame a servant at a local Christian church mercial intention. for five years. Because of his experience in 100

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Internationally, there is evidence of personal connections to places including China, Korea, Macao, and Vietnam. The father of Satu Yoshiuemonmasa (age 33) went to Koshi (modern day Hanoi, Vietnam) twenty-five years before and had lost contact with the family ever since. Similarly, the maid Rin in Hori Kihee’s household noted her father’s departure to Koshi in the year of Kanei 9 (1632) and a subsequent death due to disease. The adventures of parents were just as exciting. Ikemoto Koshiro’s Korean Father who came to Hirado at a young age became a Christian, sailed to Macao, and returned to Hirado several years later and died with his Nagasaki wife.

domain and buttressed by the Jesuit Associations and the local feudal lord Otomo Yoshishige (1530~1587); another clan was headed by Xu Hai (died in 1556), who was in the employ of Shimazu Domain and gained support from the different lord Shimazu Takahisa (1514~1517) . Both of the clans were actively involved in a wide range of Asian trade and particularly smuggling. Taking advantage of connections with the Jesuits, Wang successfully expanded his sphere from the trade with China to Portuguese trade and became the dominating power across the sea between China and Japan. After the death of Wang in 1557, the driving force of the trade across the East Asian Sea shifted from Chinese pirates to the Portuguese traders, who obtained Concisely stated as these personal to permission to settle in Macao at the narratives are, they contain rich inforsame time . Meanwhile, the pirate empire mation about the general international Wang built fell apart into several small and environment of sixteenth-to seventeenthconflicting clans. Given his registered age century Asia. In the aforementioned Yokose of 53, Yokose was probably born around Magouemon’s (age 53) registered record, 1559~61 (taking into consideration the there is an interesting sentence regarding two-year inflation of the Japanese concepof his parents: “parents are Chinese, who tion of Sai, age), a time period right around were originally captured by Hahan, came to the death of Wang and the power shifting Nagasaki, and became Christians.” Here, of marine trades. Given this context, the “Hahan” is the prevalent word referring case of Yokose’s parents may serve as an to pirates, which were largely known as interesting clue into the study of the slave Wako. Wako had been raiding the coasttrade conducted by pirates at that time. lines of China, Japan, and Korea from the thirteenth century onwards. According to Conclusion a study on the pirates in the sixteenth century, there were two major clans of pirates: With the brief summaries of 226 one was led by Wang Zhi (died 1559) who lives of Nagasaki residents, one can go was associated with Otomo and Matsuura beyond the limited documentation litera2011

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ture. This paper extracts information from References the population registers of Hirado-cho, Anno Masaki, Koshiron : Hirado, Nagasaki, Yokoseur, and examines some of the religious and (Tokyo: nihon edeitasukuru shoban bu, 1992.11). immigration patterns in a family context. Despite the limited number of samples, the David Howell, Geographies of Identity in Nineteenth Century Japan (Berkeley: University of California population register should be valued as a Press, 2005). useful primary source that may offer insight Endo Shusaku, Chinmoku, (Tokyo: Shinchosha, 1966). into early Tokugawa Japan. Some of the findings provide confirmation of existing Endo Shusaku, Silence, trans. William Johnston (New studies on Nagasaki as the frontier of the York: Taplinger, 1980) diffusion of Christian; others offer fresh G. William Skinner, “Conjugal Power in Tokugawa perspectives for further study, such as the Japanese Families,” in Barbara D. Miller, Sex and Geninfluence of conjugal power on religious der Hierarchies (Cambridge UP, 1993), p.235~270. choices and its significance in understanding the religious environment as a whole. George Elison, Deus Destroyed : the Image of Christianity in Early Modern Japan, (Cambridge: HUP, 1988).

No less important is the information on the international and domestic trade environment, which can be derived from personal narratives. With that information and possibly similar records from neighboring areas, one could draw a map of the people and trade movements of premodern Japan, which could in turn provide substantial evidence in understanding the pre-modern commercial atmosphere. Similar discoveries can apply to the international trade systems as well, which could be further enriched by juxtaposing relevant files in China, Korea, South-east Asia, Portugal, and other related countries. In this manner, the Nagasaki Hirado-cho population register presents a micro-history scope that deserves future study.

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Hirado shishi, Minzoku hen, (Hirado shishi hensan linkai, Heisei 10 [1998]). Ikegami Takasho, “Nagasaki Hirado-Cho Ni Miru Shukyo Jijyo”, Tokai shigaku, 1, (Tokai rekishigaku kai: 1966.6), p.51~67. Kären Wigen, The Making of a Japanese Periphery, 1750-1920 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995). Laurel L. Cornell and Hayami Akira “The Shumon Aratame Cho: Japan’s Population Registers,” Journal of Family History 11 no. 4 (1986), 311-28. Matsuura Tokei, Morinaga Taneo edit., Nagasaki kokon shuran, vol. 1~2(Nagasaki bunken sha, Showa 51 [1976]). Morimoto Kazuhiko, Senzo saishi to ie no kakuritsu : “handanka” kara ikka ichiji e, (Kyoto: minerubua shobo, 2006.10). Niwa Kankichi, Morinaga Taneo edit., Nagasaki jitsuroku taisei, seihen, (Nagasaki bunken sha, Showa 48 [1973]).

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Nagasaki Kenshi, shiryo hen, vol. 1~4, (Nagasaki kenshi hensan linkai, Showa 39 [1946]) Nagasaki Hirado-cho ninbetsu cho, Kyushu shiryo sosho, (Kyushu shiryo kanko kai hen, Showa 30 [1955]). Ronald P. Toby, State and Diplomacy in Early Modern Japan (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984). T. C. Smith, Agrarian Origins of Modern Japan (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1959). Takeno Yoko, “Nanban Boeki to Kinkyorei: ‘Hiradocho ninbetsu sesho tadashi’ kara”, Tokushu: Kyushu to kirishitan, Nihon fukyo no haikei to kirishitan no doko, Kairo, 9, (“Kairo” henshu iinkai, Kaichosha, 2010.3), p.18~30. Tanabe Mokeicho, Niwa Kankichi, Morinaga Taneo, edit., Nagasaki jitsuroku taisei, Sei hen, (Nagasaki: Nagasaki Bunkei Sha, Showa 48,[1973]). Toby, Ronald P.”Sakoku” to iu gaiko, (Tokyo: Shogaku Kan, 2008). Yoshimitsu Khan, Japanese Moral Education Past and Present, (London: Associated University Presses, 1997). Yoshimura Masami, “’Go kaseiten soko’ no naka no shoki Hirado-han zo—taikai kankei no ninshiki o chushin ni”, Shakai bunka shigaku, (Shakai bunka shigaku kai) 51, 2009.2, p.21~38. Yamaoka Yuka, Nagasaki kasho keiei no shiteki kenkyu: kindai chugoku shonin no keiei to chobo, (Kyoto: Minerubua shobo, 1995). Yajima yutaka, Nagasaki Kirishitan ruizokucho no kenkyu, (Tokyo: Musashi no shobo, 1978).

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MEMOIR A Hong Kong Love Letter Sean Dinsmore

Source: www.turizmtatilseyahat.com

New York City is the skyline of my past, and Hong Kong is the skyline of the present. But I live in Shanghai, which is the skyline of the very near future. One night a few years ago I found myself hurtling through the soft Hong Kong night in a taxi, when I saw the bleary lights of the endless New Territories highrises for the first time. I was on my way to Central from the airport, and as I hummed past these Cantonese corridors of humanity they came into focus, blinking and twinkling on either side of me. I cracked

the window and was awestruck. Who lives there? I asked myself. What are they doing? I wanted to know. I have never had that feeling about Shanghai. In fact I have often wondered, how can a city of twenty million souls have so little palpable soul? And how can a small, overcrowded archipelago of concrete and jungly rocks have so much of it? Having spent the best part of my formative years living on the jagged hemline between Chinatown and the Lower East Side of Manhattan, I got to know the hab-

Sean Dinsmore has been working in Asia for the past eight years as a DJ, freelance writer, and music producer. His writing has been published in China Daily and the Shanghai Star. He is currently the director of Guru, an independent music production company in Shanghai.

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its – the smells and sounds - of an extended Hong Kong. In those days you never heard Mandarin spoken downtown, only Cantonese. The first time I ever heard Mandarin was on cable TV, and I got into an argument with my brother, who said it was ‘Chinese’. But this shushing, fluttering of birds’ wings didn’t sound anything like the long vowels or comedic groaning we heard from Bruce Lee and Billy Chong every Saturday morning on Kung Fu Theater. Somebody had changed the channel.

a stroll around the neighborhood; down to the news stand for the New York Post I would walk in my sweat pants and sandals, by the F train at East Broadway and Canal. They had Hong Kong Playboy and Penthouse magazines there, and as if that wasn’t exotic enough they also had an array of brightly colorful boxes containing wild elixirs and unknown potions behind the counter. Being a man of habits they knew me well in there, and one day when I went to pay for my paper the sharp eyed lady who ran the place saw I had a cut on The Chinatown of my youth was my hand where my cat had scratched me. the Pearl River Market on Canal Street, In a flash she produced a bottle of mysterian inscrutable emporium filled with silks, ous brown liquid and rubbed some on the teak wood and porcelain, and the Rosewound, and it smelled strange, tangy and mary theater on East Broadway, where it sweet. I don’t remember if it healed the cut joins forces with the Bowery and pours over any faster, but I searched all of that afterthe Manhattan Bridge; a place where you noon looking for the formula, and finally could walk in and be alone sometimes in found it in a cramped traditional medicine the afternoon, watching a Kung Fu dazshop on Pell Street. The psychedelic sixzler or a whacky screwball comedy. And ties poster of its label read: Wong To Yick there were endless jingly, smoky little shops Wood Lock Medicated Oil. selling Double Happiness and Year of the Tiger posters, along with huge red mar After buying the paper I would usuriage candles and temple incense; a million ally cross the street and enter the Wing little tsotchkes that charmed me and fired Shing restaurant on the corner of Rutgers the wanderlust of my imagination. It was a Street, where they had the best gai mei bao constantly evolving place, Chinatown, and (coconut buns) in all of Chinatown. Once, even though I lived there for almost twenty I had bought a small green jadeite frog on years I never got bored of walking around a bright red string and was wearing it as a its grimy, rat-trap streets. Every single day I bracelet when the little round man behind saw something that I’d never noticed bethe counter spied it and asked where I got fore. it. His eyes were twinkling as told him, this is Chinatown, it’s easy to find these good My morning ritual always involved luck charms everywhere. He laughed and 2011

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said how could I be sure it was good luck, as he opened his little black marble eyes wide. Remembering the story the lady I bought it from told me, I said ‘Well the frog is good luck - for money jumping into your pocket’. He was a moon faced man and he had a habit of flicking his unreasonable salt and pepper hair back into place with little jerks of his head as he spoke. He now reared back and chuckled deeply, winking at me as he said ‘How you know the monay not jumping out your pocket? Maybe is a bad luck for youuu!’

sees a hundred odd people jostling in line for the taxis. After finally getting in one (wow, they weren’t kidding…people really don’t speak any English) I spent the next ten minutes trying, with increasing depths of desperation to pronounce the address of my friend’s apartment. The driver: How can I describe the driver? Unhelpful seems to not do him justice, and honestly it wouldn’t be quite right. After the first five attempts, Ruijin Lu…Ray-Jin Lu… RAYJIN LU! He calmly invited me to get the hell out of his taxi. ‘Ting bu dong!’ he screamed at me (I would find out later he The first time I went to Hong Kong, was only speaking at normal volume) ‘I many years later, it instantly felt like home. don’t understand you!’ Miraculously the Walking along the busy streets I smelled the taxi queue attendant stepped in and transfamous Five Flowers Tea brewing in giant lated (a veteran of atonal Laowai attempts brass cauldrons; there in the windows of at guidebook Chinese), as he understood the innumerable chemist’s shops was the the address - hardly an exotic one right in same Wood Lock oil, plus a million other the center of town. Amazed and confused potions and lotions in their old school floral as I was (the flight, the fight, the boneboxes. The lady at the coffee shop laughed chilling air) I kept thinking, as we pulled out and elbowed her friend when I asked her that I’d said it exactly the same way as the for gai mei bao on that first morning, vistaxi queue man. I would learn quickly that ibly pleased that I knew the local way to say with Mandarin it’s all in the tones. it. It was a dream, it was déjà vu; going to a place for the first time that you already As the taxi came careening and knew intimately. It was a kung fu movie. screeching out of the gate, jostling with all the other dirty, squeaking vehicles, I real The first time I landed in Shanghai ized in one all-knowing instant that China a few years later was also like a dream, a would be nothing like anything I had ever very different dream. A dream in which an known before. To begin with my driver (fifun-hurried, tanned DJ who’d been living tyish, wild-haired, in a shabby, tea stained happily in Bangkok’s sunny ennui for three captains jacket with, ironically, filthy white years steps out of an airport into freezing gloves on) was smoking and had his window grey March air in a short sleeved shirt, and open. Through a combination of charades 106

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and semaphore signals I got him to roll it up. The view outside the taxi’s window leant itself to my growing sense of unease. The hopeless February sky was the color of a dirty dishrag, and some cruel celestial hand was wringing it out, producing sooty pellet-sized explosions of rain that hit the cab with velocity and vengeance – producing a sound not unlike a BB gun being shot at a tin can. Ting, Ping, Ping…Ting. At first I assumed it was just a foggy day, and that was the reason I couldn’t see any countryside or skyline. But I soon began to realize (the odiferous air, my stinging eyes) that it was smog that was obscuring my view, and a nasty dose of it at that. My excitement at finally being in The People’s Republic of China was quickly giving way to serious doubts, and a simmering sense of dread. Oh, and the driver was now smoking again, and motioning to me with a smile – did I want the window up or down? Things got better once I’d settled into my friend’s old lane house apartment in the French Concession area. I gradually began to find the rhythm and flow of Shanghai life – often fast and uninviting, but also filled with moments of well-worn indolence. I discovered wonders like Fuxing Park, with it’s Qigong nutters walking backwards and banging their heads into tree trunks, or fifty-something fox-trotters dancing to everything from Big Band to Classical to Disco, and the shrewdly contested Chinese chess matches and card games, with their large attendant peanut galler2011

ies. Yes, there was much to this Shanghai – much that was new and (more interestingly) much that was old. The dilapidated Art Deco buildings around Ruijin Lu were a revelation – allowing me to imagine that I alone was discovering them, and eliciting great opium dreams of future purchase and rehabilitation. The locals were easily as neurotic as any New Yorkers I’ve ever known. In my first two weeks in Shanghai I saw: Two men in pajamas fighting on the sidewalk, each carrying a small dog in one hand, and shoving with the other; an elderly couple waiting for the light to change in matching electric blue pajamas holding a white rabbit; a heavily made-up woman coming out of a salon in proud clashing animal prints and knee-high orange leather go-go boots getting into her brand new BMW and then refusing to pay the hapless parking attendant his ten yuan and almost running him over as she peeled out. She evidently felt she had paid enough already at the dealership. There is also a lot about Shanghai that I will probably never reconcile myself to, and to be honest, that I will never understand. It is a city with a long history of bandits, millionaires and con men, and that’s still what makes it tick today. It worships money in a way that makes all other forms of human endeavor seem shabby and useless – the arts, history, social programs, education – are all second class citizens in Shanghai. The Shanghainese understand this about their city and themselves, and

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are renowned throughout China for being ruthless business people. It’s a city of high trickery, great fortunes, humor, striving and sorrow…surely it has its own soul, but I find that it lacks soul, because that kind of soul and money almost never go hand in hand. It’s tell-tale that the company I own is in Hong Kong, but I live and work in Shanghai. Shanghai is where the money is now, but for me Hong Kong has all the soul.

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