Diasporic Chinese voluntary associations engage China's rise

Since the late 1970s, China has gradually risen as a global power, which culminates in the present moment when large-scale geopolitical and economic ventures such as the Belt and Road Initiative have generated diversified cross-border connections. This is most forcefully felt in the Chinese diaspora, and particularly those in Southeast Asia since the region is home to the largest and most diverse diasporic Chinese population. Chinese voluntary associations (CVAs), as crucial social institutions in the Chinese diaspora, are actively engaging with China's rise and responding to the (trans) regional political-economic and socio-cultural changes. In this introduction of the special section, we open up a collection of five research articles and one commentary that discuss the ambivalences and tensions in CVAs’ engagement with China's rise. We conceptualize CVAs as ever-evolving ancestral communities which actively (re)position themselves in relation to complex configurations of power dynamics taking place between actors in China and the Chinese diaspora. Ancestral communities evolve through a constant mediation of the two mutually-constitutive processes of transnationalization and localization, which take on dual-facing and double-embedded orientations. This special section also highlights the continuing significance and renewed engagement of CVAs and potential tensions and conflicts generated in changing geopolitical and domestic environment.     

Negotiating China's rise: The dynamics of Chinese business associations and the Belt and Road Initiative in Brunei Darussalam

With an increasingly assertive China and the intensifying influence of the Sinocentre, Chinese overseas who have access to Chineseness can exercise their agentic power in using their cultural capital for economic gains. Beijing has recognised the potential for diasporic Chinese entrepreneurs to contribute to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) given their influence in Southeast Asia's economy. Correspondingly, these entrepreneurs hail the BRI as a strategic opportunity for them to turn their cultural capital into fiscal capital. Considering the increased global connectivity and new Chinese migration geographies led by the BRI, this article examines the case of Chinese business associations in Brunei Darussalam. The heterogenous responses of these ethnic Chinese and their associations to China and the BRI attest to the multiplicity and contestations of Chineseness based on different migration histories and sentiments to their ancestral land. We focus on the dynamics between the old Chinese Bruneian business elites and the more recent Chinese business migrants from Malaysia and China. An investigation of the cultural and economic politics within the Chinese Bruneian business community will provide insights into the modality of Chineseness as an economic asset that can be tactically used by diasporic Chinese entrepreneurs to maintain their social position and to respond to China's economic rise.     

Beyond as bridges: The role of the Chinese voluntary associations in Chinese outward foreign direct investment in Southeast Asia

With the implementation of the ‘Go Global’ strategy and the Belt and Road Initiative, Chinese enterprises have gradually grown into the main force of outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) around the world. Overseas and domestic Chinese voluntary associations (CVAs) have actively promoted inward foreign direct investment in China, while their role in helping Chinese enterprises invest abroad has not been fully revealed. To address this lacuna, we explore the role of CVAs in the foreign direct investment of Chinese enterprises in Southeast Asia and the heterogeneity of their roles based on different types of associations. Our main argument is that CVAs play an intermediary role in shaping Chinese OFDI by facilitating bilateral information exchange and resource matching to enable enterprises' global–local interactions. This research contributes to verifying the impact of CVAs on Chinese enterprises' OFDI and providing implications for both host countries to attract investment and multinational enterprises from China and other developing countries to achieve internationalisation.     

Performing ‘Chinese‐ness’ in Singkawang: Diasporic moorings,festivals and tourism

Through an examination of two festivals – Qing Ming and Cap Go Meh – in the town of Singkawang in Indonesian Borneo (Kalimantan), we show how Singkawang‐bound Chinese Indonesian tourists and their Singkawang‐based relatives produce a diasporic heritage network through ‘moorings’ generated by both transnational and internal migration. Instead of returning to a singular ‘homeland’ in distant China, these tourists return to Chinese‐majority Singkawang as a result of their personal genealogical roots and of their broader cultural allegiance with a kind of Chinese‐ness that Singkawang has come to represent within a post‐Suharto Indonesia. Through these two festivals, we demonstrate how personal heritage practices like ‘roots tourism’ and visiting friends and relatives are intimately bound up with identity and developmental politics at local, national and international scales. In so doing, we identify a range of ways in which migratory and tourism flows by Chinese Indonesian internal migrants shape relations to their ancestral hometowns and cultural ‘homelands’ in Indonesia within the context of membership to and participation in a broader transnational diaspora.     

Moving beyond survivalism? Youth perspectives on non-Mandarin Chinese languages in the study of Chinese voluntary associations in Singapore and Vancouver

The contributions of Chinese voluntary associations (CVAs) have often been viewed through a survivalist lens. As a process by which the activities of such organisations are interpreted through a rigid sense of what a Chinese community association is and should be, survivalist tendencies in academic scholarship must be re-thought to fully assess the functions of several types of CVAs, including amid the cultural rise of the People's Republic of China. In light of Sara Ahmed's notion of ‘orientation’, we offer a vantage point from which to rethink the roles of such associations. We do so by illuminating the contributions of key organisations involved in efforts to revitalise Chinese languages other than Mandarin in two locales outside of China, namely the Siong Leng Musical Association and Viriya Community Services in Singapore, and Wongs' Benevolent Association and Youth Collaborative for Chinatown in Vancouver. By focusing on these four voluntary associations in Singapore and Vancouver and, more specifically, on the perspectives of their youth members, we show the similar dialectical nature of their activities, which are caught in the dynamic interplays between local and global cultural forces and between intergenerational perspectives on language use.     

Changing rules of the game: local responses to decollectivisation in Thai Nguyen,Vietnam

This paper documents the uneven experiences of decollectivisation, using Thai Nguyen province as a setting for an exploration of divergent outcomes of, and local responses to, land allocation. Ethnicity, blood relations and settlement history are identified as emerging axes of differentiation in new patterns of vulnerability regarding access to land. This trend is evidenced by the phenomenon of farmers who migrated to the region during the collectivisation period and were subsequently left landless as longer term residents from other ethnic groups reclaimed their ancestral lands.     

利用RAPD标记鉴定大豆种质

本研究以５７个中国大豆祖先吕系及育成品种和１８个美国大豆祖先品系为ＤＮＡ样品来源，通过随机引物ＰＣＲ扩增基因组ＤＮＡ的多态性，探索利用ＲＡＰＤ标记鉴定和相关种质的可能性。研究结果表明，５０个１０摩尔随机引物共扩增可分辩产物２４６个，其中８２．４％的随机引物可产生多态性产物，所扩增产物的５４．４％至少在两个基因毒草境存在差异。上ＰＣＲ扩增产物分别以１和０记录存在与否。扩增产物间的成对比较可产生非相似     

Between positionality and nudging: A rising China and Chinese voluntary associations in Southeast Asia

Drawing upon cases studies from Southeast Asia, especially Singapore and Malaysia, this article addresses the following questions pertaining to the rise of China and its impact upon Chinese voluntary associations (CVAs) in the region over the past two decades. By employing theoretical insights of positionality, nudging and de-territorialisation and by focusing on various strategies pursued respectively by CVAs and the state, we conclude: (i) the growing economic ties between China and Southeast Asia serve as the platform through which the reconstruction of the CVAs take place; (ii) the reconstitution of the CVAs has been significantly driven by their own initiatives to compete in a new economy, in which knowledge of and connection with a rising China as an expanding market and a culture has advantages; (iii) the states in both China and Southeast Asia have played a part in the reconfiguration of the CVAs, motivated by their respective political and economic agendas; and (iv) it is imperative to go beyond the conventional approaches in understanding CVAs (internal structure and external connections) that have dominated much of the existing literature; and we argue that it is in the interactions and intersections between the internal dynamics and external political economy that a new type of CVAs has emerged.     

Rural land reforms and villagers' preferences for urban settlement: A case study of Shandong Province,China

Based on surveys conducted in Shandong Province, China, this paper examined the interests of rural residents to move to and settle in cities, as well as the factors that motivate or discourage their potential settlement changes. Results of the binary logistic regression analysis showed that villagers' urban settlement preference was related to sociodemographic factors such as gender, age, and occupation. Overall, the separation of the “three rights” (collective ownership, land contract right, and land use right) associated with rural land has strengthened the urban settlement preference of rural residents. Nevertheless, we did not find significant association between land transfer and the preference for urban settlement. For villagers who expressed interest in urban settlement, better job opportunities, education opportunities, and higher income are the leading “pull” factors that would attract them to cities. The attachment to rural life, high living costs, and high housing prices in cities were the top concerns for villagers who did not want to move. The study also found that villagers' desired urban destinations changed with the changing land parameters, indicating that the outcomes of China's rural land reforms may not be aligned well with the policy goals laid in the country's urbanization and rural development plans.     

Place,identity and immigrant communities: The organisation of the Yulan Festival in post‐war Hong Kong

Abstract: In the process of migration, some traditions persist while others do not. The Yulan Festival, also known as the Ghost Festival, continues to be observed by different subethnic Chinese migrant groups in Hong Kong for a variety of reasons. Although the festival organisation accentuates subethnic distinctions, paradoxically it also enables different groups to integrate into the larger community. The activities articulate various meanings of ‘place’– as ‘ancestral place’ on the mainland where
the rituals are believed to originate, as the specific locality/neighbourhood in Hong Kong where the festival is held, and Hong Kong as a whole. This article, based on interviews with Chiu Chow and Hoklo participants, shows how they think of the different meanings of ‘place’, which in turn reflects the way they make sense of the process of migration.     

Development of technopoles in China

Although limited technology transfer among countries has occurred in the past 15 years or so, industrialised countries are unwilling to transfer their state-of-the-art technologies to less developed countries, for both political and economic reasons. As a result, China decided to speed research and development of its own high technologies and commercialise them by establishing in the late 1980s 52 High and New Technology Industry Development Zones. Through these zones achievements of scientific research could be transformed into competitive commodities and a new generation of entrepreneurs and competent managers could be bred. While China’s high technology development zones were modelled on the general concept of technopole, they are not exact duplicates of any of the three types of technopole that have been developed in the Western industrialised countries; they have distinct Chinese characteristics. This study also found that contrary to the popular belief, the high technology zones in coastal provinces as a whole do not perform much better than those in interior provinces. Instead, the majority of the zones that are located in provincial capital cities exhibited above-average performance. This suggests that capital cities in interior provinces can compete well with coastal cities in development of high-tech industries.     

Examining trans‐Tasman migration of new immigrants to New Zealand from the People's Republic of China: A quantitative approach

‘Back‐door’ migration refers to the entry of overseas‐born New Zealand citizens to Australia. Many New Zealand Chinese migrants from the People's Republic of China (PRC) are within this migration flow. Based on a detailed analysis on the permanent and long‐term arrival and departure data from Statistics New Zealand and an online survey conducted by the author, this paper examines the trans‐Tasman migration of New Zealand's PRC migrants. The result shows that compared with New Zealand‐born citizens, the trans‐Tasman migration of China‐born New Zealand citizens is not large in number. The 2001 Australia immigration policy change of the welfare provisions to New Zealand citizens discouraged ‘back‐door’ migration of the PRC migrants in the short term only. Australia still remains a favoured destination for many of them. Economic consideration is the main factor drawing these migrants to Australia. This paper also reveals a circulatory feature of the PRC migrants' trans‐Tasman migratory movements, as evidenced by a significant number of respondents who had migrated from New Zealand to Australia indicating that they would come back to New Zealand at some future time.     

Relationship between Farmland Use Right Circulation and Non-agricultural Employment——Based on Survey Data from Eastern and Western China

Relationship between Chinese rural non-agricultural employment and farmland use circulation has always been a hot research topic without final conclusions.This paper uses survey data of"China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study(CHARLS)"covering 1,549 households of 95 villages in Zhejiang and Gansu Province in 2008.According to the data analysis,Zhejiang Province has a higher ratio of rural households leasing out their farmland than Gansu Province has,while the latter has a higher ratio of rural residents going out for earning a living.In both provinces,non-agricultural employment and farmland use circulation show significant positive correlation,but in Gansu,non-agricultural employment of farmers shows no significant positive correlation with rural households leasing out their farmland.The factor shows that for peasants in underdeveloped regions of west China,they rely more on land because of its social security functions,so they are not willing to lease out their land even when they go to cities for earning a living.For local government,it is not appropriate to promote farmland use circulation by depending on the transfer of rural labor forces,fundamental needs of peasants must be taken into consideration.     

Negotiating ‘home’ and ‘national identity’: Chinese‐Malaysian transmigrants in Singapore

Abstract: Part of the globalisation phenomenon involves an increasing number of elite transmigrants traversing national boundaries in response to the global demand for skilled labour while maintaining multifaceted social ties astride political, geographic and cultural borders, linking home and host countries together. As transmigrants ‘live’ in several communities simultaneously, their identities, behaviour and values are often not limited by location. Thus, notions of ‘home’ and ‘national identity’ are also being reviewed given the discrepancies between these concepts and locality. In this context, this paper explores questions of ‘home’ and ‘national identity’ among skilled Chinese‐Malaysians working and residing in Singapore, portraying them as active participants of two (or more) countries. It focuses on their strategies and struggles in negotiating ideologies of ‘home’ and ‘national identities’ across borders in a setting of two neighbouring countries umbilically linked in a volatile political relationship. It further examines their degree of concern in the political affairs of both countries. Between ‘home’ and ‘host’, Chinese‐Malaysians redefine their practices of home(‐making) in relation to their national identity, drawing on the resources and resilience of familial ties, nostalgic memories and other practical lifecourse needs.     

中国农村宅基地整理潜力估算

由于土地利用分类中缺乏农村宅基地的用地类型,中国目前尚缺乏全国尺度的农村宅基地整理潜力估算结果,不利于农村宅基地整治工作的开展和部署。笔者建立了依据农村居民点整理潜力推算法、户均宅基地标准法和农村人口等比例缩减法3种方法,估算了中国2020年的农村宅基地整理潜力。研究表明：（1）2020年,依据农村居民点整理潜力推算法测算的宅基地整理潜为239.05×104 hm²,户均宅基地标准法的测算结果为597.50×104 hm²,农村人口等比例缩减法的测算结果为130.36×104 hm²;（2）户均宅基地标准法测算的农村宅基地整理潜力由于缺乏对农村宅基地整理中自然、经济、社会限制性因素的考虑而明显偏大,综合修整后,该方法测算的中国农村宅基地整理潜力约为191.20×104 hm²;（3）统筹考虑各种测算方法的结果,中国2020年的农村宅基地整理潜力约为200×104 hm²。空间上,中国农村宅基地的整理潜力主要分布在东部和中部区域;相对而言,东北区和西部地区的整理潜力较小。各省份中,山东、安徽、河南、江苏、辽宁、黑龙江等省份的整理潜力较大;西藏、青海、上海、福建、海南5个省份的整理潜力较小。     

Comparative Study on Settlement Systems under Different Land Systems——Structure and Optimization

Based on the data of the second national land survey and GIS method, this paper takes Fujin City as a study area to refl ect the similarities and differences of settlement system characteristics between reclamation and agricultural region in Heilongjiang Province, in order to discover the effect of land system on structure of settlement system. The results are as follows:(1) In the aspect of the spatial distribution pattern, settlement systems of both reclamation and agricultural region show clustered distribution, but those in reclamation region are denser;(2) The settlement systems of reclamation and agricultural regions can be divided into 4 levels, and their settlement systems are not incompatible with the 3 distribution patterns proposed in the center place theory, and show completely different hierarchical orders;(3) The average scale of reclamation settlement is smaller than that of agricultural settlement, but the difference is much more signifi cant;(4) The settlement systems in reclamation and agricultural regions have some problems, such as high proportion of the mini-settlements, and unreasonable space network system. Some measures should be taken, such as accelerating the reconstruction of the settlement system, optimizing the layout of settlement network system and transportation network, and promoting the connection between settlement systems in reclamation and agricultural regions in near future.     

基于村民参与式的乡村人居环境评价研究

乡村人居环境改善是城乡统筹发展的重要内容,也是美丽乡村建设的关键所在。笔者着眼于“以人为本”的视角,以重庆市铜梁区南城街道鱼溅村为例,通过村民参与式与数学模型定量的研究方法,研究乡村人居环境村民的满意度和优化方向。研究结果显示：鱼溅村人居环境的整体满意度水平一般,人居软环境系统的社会环境与经济环境满意度为一般和不满意,硬环境系统的设施环境和生态环境对整体满意度贡献率较高,结论表明鱼溅村亟需加强对人居软环境系统的优化;同时,研究还显示鱼溅村人居环境满意度的空间分布差异较大,这说明人居环境的优化需要合理布局、整体筹划。笔者最后提出了优化的对策,对山地丘陵地区的乡村人居环境建设具有普遍借鉴意义。     

On the economic interdependence between China and Japan: Challenges and possibilities

The paper presents an analysis of the economic relationship between the two most important economies in Asia. Over the last decades, the Chinese and Japanese economies have become more economically interdependent, a development which will, in the long run, impact the countries' political relationship. The paper seeks to answer the question: How can China and Japan gain from the current economic situation, further enhance their relationship and increase their synergies for regional economic development? Data on trade and Foreign Direct Investment are used in combination with primary data from interviews with Japanese and Chinese companies on how they perceive the current business situation and future potential. The result of the data analysis shows that the countries have much to gain from their economic interdependence. The firms see great potential in their respective markets but are concerned about political turbulence. Three possible scenarios for the future economic relationship are presented, including fierce competition on all markets and a leveraging of resources for mutual development between Chinese and Japanese companies.     

中国普通野生稻Oryza rufipogon Griff.的形态分类研究

选用中国７省５７１份，国外２７份普通野生稻（ＯｒｙｚａｒｕｆｉｐｏｇｏｎＧｒｉｆｆ简称普野）的１０个形态性状进行了聚类分析并结合普野栖生地的生态考察。将中国普通野生稻划分为多年生与一年生两个普野群，七个普野型，作者根据普野植株在北京温室越冬与翌春植株再生情况及其繁殖方式并联系其生长习性与同工酶分析论证了，中国除多年生普野外还存在一年生普野，但期生自然群体尚待考察与研究确认。本文还对中国栽培稻的原始     

The expansion of Chinese banks along the routes of the Belt and Road Initiative: Following customers and geopolitical relations

Existing studies on the global expansion of banks have been mostly based on the experience of the banks from more developed economies, while little is known about the geographies of internationalization of banks from less developed countries. The expansion of Chinese banks, with state-owned commercial banks in the lead, has been accelerating since the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) was proposed in 2013. This study contributes to existing research by providing new evidence and explanations based on the case of expansion of Chinese banks along the BRI routes. Chinese banks started to expand from Hong Kong and Macao, then expanded to Southeast Asia and the Arabian Peninsula, and finally reached Central Asia and other regions. The branches of Chinese banks are mainly clustered in Southeast Asian countries rather than other regions. Similar to their Western counterparts, Chinese bank branches are inclined to agglomerate in international or regional financial hubs. The regression analysis shows that two factors are crucial in explaining the spatial distribution of Chinese banks along the routes of the BRI. First, Chinese banks are likely to follow their customers, namely, state-owned firms from the non-financial sectors making direct investments in overseas regions. Second, Chinese banks are more inclined to open branches in countries that have good geopolitical relations with China reflecting the challenging international environment for Chinese banks to seek global expansion.