Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group

A Tale of Two Cities: Hong Kong and Dubai

By Thorsten Botz-Bornstein

Celebrating Disappearance/Appearance

Hong Kong and Dubai have more in common than towers wearing architectural brandnames. Being hubs between what has commonly been called the “East” and the “West,” both cities have been submitted to spectacular developments that transformed them within a few decades from fishing villages deprived of any urban history into international metropolises. Both cities possess port locations that are central to trade and both cities have attracted massive international capital as well as large expat communities. Neither Hong Kong nor Dubai occupies a central position within its respective region as a producer of goods, but both function as centers of facilitation and are rather para-sites than sites. Dubai is the third most important re-export centre in the world just after Hong Kong and Singapore. Neither Hong Kong nor Dubai has transport rivers and, at present, neither city has a significant amount of raw materials. Though the foundation of modern Dubai depended very much on initial oil reserves that are no longer available, it is correct to maintain that both cities owe their present existence to obstacles that forced them to invest in non-traditional economies. Finally, both cities came to symbolize globalization and an extreme form of urbanity based on aggressive international capitalism.

Attracting international investments, but little “culture” (and being deprived of local cultural resources), for a long time, Hong Kong’s entire existence as a city depended on financial markets. Dubai’s existence can be defined in the same terms. As a matter of fact, Dubai has been quite commonly called “the Hong Kong of the Middle East.” Neither Hong Kong nor Dubai are “real” cities in the conventional sense because neither has preserved its historical context.

Hong Kong and the Celebration of Disappearance

In the 1980s, when Hong Kong owned the world’s largest container cargo terminals, the city’s image was that of a cultural desert determined by superficiality, internal fragmentation, consumerism, and the lack of urban history or local identity. Today all this is seen as typical for Dubai. However, a “cultural turn” promoting a local ethos based on a common language and a particular geographical location, seemingly reversed Hong Kong’s cultural situation in the 1980s, creating a film industry focusing on local stories and local people that would become famous as the Hollywood of the East. In popular music, Cantopop has been a local genre since the 1970s. This, together with a belief in typical Hong Kong virtues such as rationality and discipline, would give Hong Kong the cultural identity it needed, which changed the perception of the city. This individualist cultural system was even strong enough to oppose big businesses.

In a way, Hong Kong became a “postmodern” city: Hong Kong is neither “pre-modern” because it does not exhibit a continuous string of histories, traditions, and culture, nor is it “modern” in the sense of de-cultured, or simply functionally economic. Mike Featherstone has called this type of city, which decides to return to culture, style, and decoration, “postmodern” because here cultural elements are most often “decontextualized, simulated, reduplicated and continually renewed and restyled.”

It is for these precise reasons that it is wrong to characterize Hong Kong’s cultural ascendance as a straightforward process of acculturation. Ackbar Abbas describes Hong Kong’s “cultural self-invention” as a device that is linked, in a paradoxical fashion, to a complex concept of “disappearance,” which comprises at least three things: First, “disappearance” addresses Hong Kong’s frantic cycle of construction, demolition, and reconstruction that yields the impression of a constant disappearance of architectural substance. Second, as Hong Kong has been submitted to more and more aggressive and advanced stages of globalization, the newly built Hong Kong architecture remains restricted to that of the brandname kind. This tendency creates a global environment that, once again, threatens to erase the newly achieved local culture and makes the city “invisible” within an international context, letting topical cultural experience disappear into an anonymous international system. This internationalization concerns also the film industry as its productions have been more and more geared towards international (and Mainland-Chinese) markets. The third meaning of disappearance has to do with the “real” disappearance of Hong Kong as it is taken over by China and will presumably, sooner or later, be absorbed into an oversized motherland.

The first two developments are not unique to Hong Kong, but what is unique is the way in which Hong Kong copes with them. As a matter of fact, Abbas links all three developments (which partly overlap and are difficult to disentangle) to the nostalgic experience of the disappearance of colonial space, which created, in his opinion, not simply a space from which “the colonial” has disappeared, but rather a “colonial space of disappearance.” Abbas’ point is that “disappearance” does not lead to disappearance at all, but rather to a sustained “aesthetics of disappearance” creating, in the case of Hong Kong, the particular cultural space of a “floating identity.” Hong Kong cinema, for example, is eager to keep pace with a subject that is always at the point of disappearing.

Dubai and the Colonial Space of Appearance

Hong Kong will not disappear but it has installed its existence within a peculiar aesthetics of disappearance. Abbas actually believes that Hong Kong will remain almost unchanged for another fifty years. The floating state of Hong Kong’s existence makes it a true forerunner of Dubai, which seems to be suspended in a similar state of floating existence, though at the opposite end of the spectrum. Dubai will simply not appear. For this city, the act of becoming has been charged with such complicated connotations that “becoming” seems to have been eternalized. While Hong Kong revels in what is (almost) no longer there, Dubai revels in what is not yet there. While Hong Kong engenders the feeling of a déjà disparu rooted in an irretrievable, colonial ex-past, Dubai installs itself in a perpetual not yet there that speaks to us through the veil of an indiscernible ex-future.

Dubai has been financed by colossal debt from international banks and its neighbor Abu Dhabi, but “Dubai as an event” has from the beginning been staged as a spectacular and eternally postponed “not yet there.” Apartments were sold long before they were built and would change their owners five times. While in Hong Kong, property speculation causes the absurd state of affairs that sooner or later any building, no matter how new or monumental it is, will vanish from the map, in Dubai maps have been written in the future tense from the beginning. We assist in the creation of Borges’ map that covers the earth because the map is supposed to be the earth. At the airports of Dubai and Abu Dhabi expensive color catalogues of the most famous architectural attractions are handed to tourists for free though a large part of the buildings presented in these catalogues do not yet exist. They are scheduled for the (sometimes very distant) future. The only positive impression that these pictures yield is that of a déjà vu of a not yet there.

Thorsten Botz-Bornstein is assistant professor of philosophy at the Gulf University for Science and Technology in Kuwait and the author of Films and Dreams: Tarkovsky, Bergman, Sokurov, Kubrick, and Wong Kar-Wai (2007), Aesthetics and Politics of Space in Russia and Japan: A Comparative Philosophical Study (2009), and The Cool-Kawaii: Afro-Japanese Aesthetics and New World Modernity (2010).

Anti-Nuclear, Anti-American: Is a Pan-Asianist Japan on the Rise Again?

By Christopher W. A. Szpilman

Pan-Asianism crops up in most unexpected places. Take the case of one Hiroshi Takashi. Hirose (b. 1943), a self-styled expert on nuclear energy, is a best-selling if controversial Japanese author. Since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, if not earlier, he has been crowing on about a looming nuclear catastrophe and, in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster, he has emerged as a leading critic of Japan’s nuclear energy program. Although I agree with Hirose that nuclear power is replete with danger, I must note that his premises are largely false and his reasoning fallacious. But my goal here is not to dwell on the content of the anti-Western and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories Hirose propounds. I merely want to note that he can be legitimately described as a pan-Asianist. I realized this after I read Hirose’s Japan’s Destiny, Asia’s Destiny, published in 2004.

In this book, echoing the views of Japan’s prewar pan-Asianists, Hirose bemoans the moral decay and vulgarity of the United States and deplores what he believes is the slavish dependence of the Japanese establishment on America. Noting that America has fallen into moral decrepitude, is “spiritually stagnant,” and weakened politically by its military overstretch throughout the world, Hirose argues that “at long last we, the Japanese, have now a chance to lead Asia independently. No better opportunity than this will ever come our way….We must view Asia as our new paradise” (p. 374).

As Hirose sees it, it is the pernicious American influence that prevented Japan from remaining a genuine Asian country in the first place, because it caused the Japanese to lose empathy with their fellow-Asians. “After the war in Japan,” he says, “the feeling of friendship and solidarity with Asians was largely lost” (p. 382), presumably on account of the shameless deal with the United States by Japan’s leaders who swapped their (and Japan’s) Asian soul in exchange for material prosperity.

The conclusion is obvious. The long-lost empathy with their fellow-Asians can be regained, says Hirose, only if Japan “renounces its alliance with the United States.” Only then, he insists, Japan will be able to become the leader of Asia.

Such expressions of solidarity with Asia may come as a surprise when voiced by an anti-nuclear campaigner (for surely the problem of nuclear energy is not only limited to Asia but is of concern to all mankind), but they have much in common both with the views of many idealistic Japanese volunteers working to help the needy in war-afflicted Asian countries and, on the opposite extreme of the political spectrum, with the views of Ishihara Shintarô, a populist politician whose Pan-Asianist views we document in our Pan-Asianism: a Documentary History. Hirose’s case provides further evidence for the great relevance of Pan-Asianism to understanding modern Japan and Asia.

Christopher W. A. Szpilman is professor of modern Japanese history and international relations at Kyushu Sangyo University, Fukuoka. He is the co-editor of Pan-Asianism: A Documentary History, Volumes 1 and 2.

Liu Xiaobo’s Sacrifice—Is It Worthwhile?

By Nathan Faries

Liu Xiaobo, a Chinese citizen, has won the Nobel Peace Prize. An active participant in the Tian’anmen Square demonstrations and author of a 2008 petition calling for radical reform in the People’s Republic, Liu sits now in a prison in northeast China.

Liu is a good choice, a man of principle fighting a lonely struggle in an increasingly apathetic political climate. This new attention should reenergize human rights advocates and shine light on groups which Liu himself has supported: the mothers of Tian’anmen victims, for example (http://www.tiananmenmother.org/).

But will the Peace Prize push forward Liu’s cause of reform? The dissident himself sounds pessimistic. Liu Xiaobo believes change will inevitably come to China because of a natural human bent toward freedom, but he is not sure that he will live to see the reforms. He has trouble imagining a Chinese Gorbachev, and he has said there will be no “timeline for political reform” offered by the government of his China. Liu Xiaobo is willing to give his life for this cause, though he expresses no confidence that his eyes will see the new China for which he hopes.

Reform must come to China by this individual path, his model teaches. The Olympic and Nobel Committees are somehow irrelevant to the process, as are the will and words of the Chinese Communist Party. Liu Xiaobo and his ilk are trying to live out a new kind of “Chineseness,” an identity that depends neither on the government to grant freedom, nor on international bodies to pressure the Party to expand liberties. Such dependence is to miss the point, even to work against the ultimate goal.

Does Liu even believe himself to be a good candidate for the Prize? He has opposed grand gestures made in the service of his cause before. As Tibet-sympathizers and other groups criticized the IOC, saying Beijing should be denied their Olympic Games, Liu claimed this kind of national sacrifice was unnecessary: “We want the Games and we want human rights to be respected.” Liu won’t ask his fellow Chinese to give up the honor and pleasure of the Olympic Games; instead he lives out a more powerful personal sacrifice.

What stands in the way of that goal? The Chinese government is good at redefining the terms of debate. The Tian’anmen “incident” in 1989 started off as a conversation between citizens and their government, but ended up as a divide between intellectual and soldier; a political debate was recast as class conflict. Ever since 1989, university students all over China have been sent off to mandatory “military training” to heal this divorce between the intelligentsia and the peasant People’s Liberation Army. The government has succeeded in changing the subject from politics to social class.

And from politics to economics. There is economic inequality in China, and there are frequent protests, but nothing seems likely to grow into a national movement. A life of sacrifice to an abstraction like political freedom grows ever more difficult in the face of concrete freedoms like the ability to travel where you want and when you want in your own car. Life in China today moves along smoothly enough for most people; Liu Xiaobo is a man to be admired, not imitated.

Perhaps to my shame, I understand the political apathy of those masses of Chinese who choose not to follow the way of Liu Xiaobo. In many respects, China is moving in the right direction, however slowly. The Soviet Union’s traumatic experience with overnight reform is constantly before the Chinese people’s eyes. I can’t help but wonder if Liu Xiaobo’s sacrifice—though certainly noble—is really necessary. If China is changing, and can only change, slowly, does Liu need to live and die in a prison cell? Is Liu Xiaobo himself preaching gradualism while living out revolution? Do a few individuals need to suffer voluntarily in today’s China to make life better for future generations?

Bad things have happened and continue to happen in China at the hands of a government that does not care enough about the suffering of individuals. Given the current state of global economies, pressure from outsiders to reform, be it from Scandinavia or the United States, holds little to no sway over the Chinese government. This loss of outsider influence stands in stark contrast to the ever-increasing international economic and political leverage wielded by the Chinese Communist Party. We need the Communists to negotiate with North Korea and to underwrite our own national debt. The Americans will to play hardball with the CCP, never an immense pool to begin with, is quickly draining away.

Giving Liu Xiaobo the Nobel Peace Prize may do nothing material to advance the cause of reform in China, given today's lack of revolutionary energy within China and without; but for the sacrifice he has offered up for the vague hope of some future good for all the rest of us, Liu Xiaobo has earned his reward.

Nathan Faries is associate professor in the English Department at the University of Dubuque. He has taught for nearly 15 years in the United States, Bejing, and Hong Kong. He is the author of The Inscrutably Chinese Church: How Narratives and Nationalism Continue to Divide Christianity.

China's Rise in Historical Perspective and U.S.-Chinese Relations Event at East-West Center in Washington on Oct 29

The East-West Center in Washington is hosting an Asia Pacific Security Seminar Book Launch on October 29th from 12:30pm to 2:00pm featuring Dr. Brantly Womack, editor of China's Rise in Historical Perspective, and Dr. Robert G. Sutter, author of U.S.-Chinese Relations: Perilous Past, Pragmatic Present.

Location: 1819 L Street, NW, Suite 200, Washington, D.C.

This event is free and open to the public, and lunch will be served.

To RSVP, please click this link: http://www.eastwestcenter.org/go.php?107 (by Oct 28).

Sub-sovereignty is a necessary evil: The Case of Hong Kong

Written by Danny Wai-hang TSUI and edited by Simon Shen

If the 1999 Right of Abode case was the first debate on the autonomy of the Hong Kong Special Administration Region (HKSAR), the current debate is the second. This time, the discussion touches upon the external autonomy of the HKSAR.

Realpolitik Operation of International Law

Public international law operates on the basis of Darwinist realpolitik. No matter how vehement the protestations of idealists over the centuries, international law is a “winner takes all” and “first speaker” legal arena. Stephen Krasner even went as far as to comment that sovereignty is an “organized hypocrisy” in describing the oxymoronic nature of the concept in the post-Westphalian era. The USSR, in the course of negotiating with the U.S. on founding membership of the UN, requested that all 15 Soviet Republics become member states. With the threat of its counterpart doing the same, Stalin withheld his much fantasized idea. Therefore, it was quite comical when it came to the author’s attention that someone had used “sovereignty” to criticize his own countrymen, whose late Qing ancestors were traumatized by the same pretext in the 1844 Opium War and the 1900 Boxer Rising. Genuine patriots should be more sensitive with this taboo.

Celestial Court under Heaven

Equality has never been our world view. Whether justified or not, China has claimed to be the celestial court under heaven. John Schrecher observed that the term “sovereignty” had mostly been used when the Chinese state was weak (i.e. in 1909 - 2 years before the Republican revolution). States have been flexible with the operation of “Equality” (“Compatibility”), if not; there would have been some faux pas. Deng Xiaoping was the vice-premier of China when he visited the U.S. in 1979, ten years later, Comrade Deng, in his civil capacity, met General Secretary Gorbachev in Beijing. Also, it was not the Republican Party chairman who met with Secretary Gorbachev in the 1986 Reykjavík Summit, but President Ronald Reagan. Nor would Colonel Gadaffi of Libya have been greeted by military officers when he paid foreign visits. Should the principle of equality be enforced in such a stringent manner that Manila would have no compatible counterpart to entertain calls from Sir Donald Tsang, modern diplomacy would not be able to operate day in and day out. At the end of the day, international politics is built on the realist calculation of power, and thus respect.

Domestic Intervention

In recent years, the Chinese government has become ever more sparing in its use of the term “sovereignty” (Charlson 2005). If we were obliged to adopt a doctrinal analysis of international law, one would find that domestic affairs are not totally immune from outside forces. In Nicaragua v United States of America ( [1986] ICJ Reports 14), the ICJ laid down four major principles reflecting the view that foreign governments cannot intervene in the home state’s choice of political, economic, social and cultural institutions, or in its foreign policy making. Operationally, one state must not seek to intervene in another state’s political affairs, nor support separatist movements and topple other states. There are reasons for intervention, such as enforcing international treaties, intervening on humanitarian grounds, protecting life and property, and preserving the state’s reputation. In any event, provided it does not violate Article 4 of Chapter 2 of the UN Charter — which stipulates the principles of non-violence, no threat of force and no compromise of local jurisdictional powers — intervention may be legal. In such a case, helping the local legal enforcement authorities to investigate and adopting other necessary means to protect lives and preserve the dignity of a state are clearly legal.

Delegation of Powers

However, these propositions all depend on whether (1) the HKSAR can undertake the aforementioned types of state behavior on behalf of its sovereign, i.e. the PRC; (2) the HKSAR’s action falls within the scope of its delegated powers in accordance with the State Constitution and the Basic Law; (3) ultra vires action taken by the HKSAR (in this case, calling Arroyo without proper authorization from the CPG) can be ratified by the CPG on an ex post basis (otherwise, it would still be unconstitutional).

Furthermore, which party can ratify such action? According to Articles 17 and 18 of the PRC Legislation Law, the NPC is entitled to repeal and amend local laws, self-autonomy ordinances, and unilateral ordinances of local provinces and regions. This legislation does not cover executive action taken by local governments, nor is it applicable in HK. Neither the Constitution nor the PRC Legislation Law includes any specific provisions on this issue. If the SC were to complain, Audrey Eu may have to seek a remedy from the Supreme People’s Court by requesting that it issue a judicial interpretation on this case. Should we seek approval from the President of the PRC? After all, he represents the state in its activities. Alternatively, should we look to the NPCSC — the state’s highest power organ, constitutionally— or turn to the State Council, which issued and offered the appointment letter to CH and Yam-kuen?

If one adopts the principle of proportionality or reasonableness, one may very possibly accept that the President of the PRC can call the president of the US directly, though the State Constitution only stipulates the “performing state activity” provision.

As for Article 13 of the Basic Law and the possible application of Article 151, this really depends on whether the CPG adopts a hands-off or hands-on management style. There would be no question of constitutionality should the CPG be obliged to take care of all details, as this would imply that Yam-kuen has no power to call, whether or not the call is answered, because it is ultra vires all along. In that case, the CPG may have to consider whether or not to ratify Yam-kuen’s ultra vires action. Should we accept that delegated foreign-related behavior is subject to ex ante CPG approval, ex post ratification may be the only remedy capable of redressing the illegality. An example is the PRC Ethnic Autonomous Region Law, which empowers the regional government to partially enforce or cease enforcing the CPG’s directives after seeking the superior organ’s ex ante approval.

Another example of this is the U.S. War Powers Act. The U.S. President is the commander in chief and the power to declare war rests with Congress. According to this Act passed in 1973, the president can send troops after the U.S. has been attacked or is under serious threat of force. The president is required to inform Congress within 48 hours, and if the proposed action is not endorsed by the Hill, the president must withdraw forces within 60 days.

Possible Application of the Common Law Principle

Had the court been able to adjudicate the case and adopt a judicial activism approach, “Callingate” would have been constitutional. This prediction is based on the premise of Minister of Home Affairs v Fisher ([1980] AC 319), which held that our mini-constitution should be interpreted in a generous and purposive manner. Yet this case merely involved individual liberty and did not touch upon executive action per se. In the case of Ma Wai Kwan, J Patrick Chan stated that the principle asserted in Attorney General of the Gambia v Jobe ([1984] AC 689) and R v Sin Yau-ming ([1992]1 HKCLR 127) can be adopted to interpret the Basic Law. The Court of Final Appeal clearly stated in the Ng Ka Ling case that the Basic Law is a “living document” aimed at coping with changing circumstances. The courts must therefore avoid interpreting the law in a literal, technical or parochial manner. Should we have the luxury of the local courts adjudicating the issue, “Callingate” would not be found to have contravened Articles 13 and 151 of the Basic Law. Nonetheless, the foregoing discussion merely represents the author’s hypothetical projection which will not be tested in practice.

The Politics of Law

From the political perspective, Beijing would be best advised to act generously by allowing the demoralized chief executive to make the call when Hong Kong’s “subjects” are under threat overseas. Legally speaking, to transplant the agency law principle of commercial law, Yam-kuen was the agent of necessity who did the necessary thing (though it was ultra vires per se) in the case of absolute imminence, albeit without proper authorization from Beijing. Even under such circumstances, the court would perceive it as a legal and reasonable delegation and exercise of power under the doctrine of necessitous intervention.

In conclusion, “Callingate” was reasonable, proportionate and necessary.

Simon Shen is associate professor in the Department of Social Sciences at the Hong Kong Institute of Education, chief coordinator/adjunct associate professor of the Master of Global Political Economy Programme at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and the co-editor of Online Chinese Nationalism and China’s Bilateral Relations.

Watch a Video about Tessa Morris-Suzuki's To the Diamond Mountain

 

Tessa Morris-Suzuki is professor in the College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University, and author of To the Diamond Mountains: A Hundred-Year Journey through China and Korea and Exodus to North Korea: Shadows from Japan's Cold War (2007).

Manga On Time

By John E. Ingulsrud and Kate Allen

Melinda Beasi, in the Boston Manga Examiner of May 18th, reports that CMX, DC Comics manga publishing arm, plans to cease publication. The first reaction to such news is: Manga readership is declining. This kind of reaction is based on the assumption that readers and consumers of popular media are also the purchasers. In the case of manga, the correlation between readers and purchasers is not so straightforward. In Reading Japan Cool, we have pointed out that in addition to purchasing, readers borrow and lend manga. Readers then sell and purchase used manga.

Outside of Japan, the literacy practice of scanlation has become widespread. Scanlation involves someone in Japan purchasing the manga magazine as soon as it is published, scanning it and sending it to a friend or group of friends who translates the speech/thought balloon content and then makes the work available on the Internet. A web search of “manga scanlation” will bring up literally hundreds of sites representing fan communities who provide translated manga for free. It is this practice of scanlation that publishers blame for their loss in sales.

Complaining about manga and comics readers’ literacy practices is nothing new. While the focus tends to be on content, seen as dangerous or in bad taste, there have been complaints about their basic formats. In the anti-comics campaigns of the 1940s and 50s, comics were criticized for being published on cheap newsprint. Yet, by printing comics this way, it allowed publishers to price them at a level children themselves could afford. Between 1945 and 1960, most Japanese readers could not afford to buy their own manga and so they got access to them through book rental shops. When they could buy manga, these were printed on even rougher newsprint than their American counterparts.

A closer look at Beasi’s report reveals a strong empathy with readers who may be left stranded since their manga series has been discontinued. A recent radio program reporting on the economic impact of the oil spill on the Alabama coast carried an interview with a mother who said her daughter could not afford her favorite manga. As manga readers ourselves, we know this means not simply being cut off from manga in general, but from one’s favorite story or stories, and it is all the more painful when you know the story is out there.

The vast majority of manga are created as narratives, and mainstream manga consist of serialized narratives. Fringe manga generally carry non-serialized self-contained stories. Once a genre receives a reliable following, the stories become serialized. These serializations continue for years, even decades. The popular manga title Naruto has been serialized for ten years, One Piece for nearly thirteen. The series based on the fictional salary man, Kosaku Shima, began in 1983.

The discontinued series that Beasi describes appear to be manga published in bound volumes, not as magazines. In Japan, for mainstream manga, the installments to the stories are published, together with installments of numerous other stories, first in thick manga magazines on cheap newsprint. Then later, if they are popular, they are published separately as books. That means the story is published twice in two different formats. However, for the overseas manga reader, there is usually only one format, the individually titled books. Although there are some manga or collections of manga available in magazine format on newsprint, readers abroad know that they have to wait and that the installments have been released months if not years earlier in Japan.

Reading a manga magazine in cheap newsprint on the day of release carries both the topicality and the disposability of a newspaper. Consequently, the installments carry the urgency of “news”. When we purchase our copies of Weekly Morning on Thursday mornings, we notice three or four others in the train car reading the same manga magazine. We know we are the first to read the installments. Kosaku Shima, for example, has been President of his company since 2008. The bound bilingual edition of the first installments of his tenure was finally published this month by Kodansha International. Meanwhile, in the weekly magazine, his electrical appliance company has already merged with other companies, changed its name, and seeing the future in producing lithium batteries, his staff are searching the Bolivian highlands for minerals.

It is this immediate access to installments that readers crave. If on the day of the magazine release, the installments could also be released on the Internet in Chinese, English, and Korean, this on-time publication would beat any scanlator. Then later, the polished bound version could be released. Manga stories do have the capacity to engage readers outside magazine installments, which is why readers purchase the bound versions. Yet, we cannot deny the thrill to be reading the story as it is created.

John E. Ingulsrud is Professor of Applied Linguistics in the Department of International Studies at Meisei University. Kate Allen is Professor of Linguistics in the School of Global Japanese Studies at Meiji University. They are the authors of Reading Japan Cool: Patterns of Manga Literacy and Discourse.

Bipolarity Revisited: Mainland China’s Response to the Google Withdrawal

By Simon Shen

Google, the world’s biggest and most famous internet-search technology corporation, has decided to cease its four-year operation in China, the world largest internet market. This also marks the end of Google’s confrontation with Beijing over the censorship of search results, as well as the alleged regular cyber attacks which have emanated from China.

On January 12th, 2010, Google first announced in its official blog that it faced cyber attacks of varying degrees on a regular basis. For example, a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on its corporate infrastructure originating from China, according to the company, was detected in mid-December. Moreover, according to Google, Beijing’s primary goal was to access the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. The company, therefore, called for a review of its business in China. As a result, on January 23rd, Google announced that it would be stopping the censorship of its search service; users visiting Google.cn will be directed to Google.com.hk (Google, 2010).

The withdrawal of Google from China has caused heated discussion in the online Chinese community. The officials in charge of the Internet Bureau under the State Council Information Office commented that Google had "violated its written promise," is "totally wrong" in stopping the censoring of its Chinese language search results, and in holding China responsible for the alleged hacking. The officials further added that the issue had been politicized from a purely commercial one, while expressing their discontent and indignation to Google for the company’s unreasonable accusations and conduct (People's Daily, 2010). Within the online community, those who criticized Google’s decision shared similar thoughts, but did so with greater clarity and more detail. Extreme opinions even associated the Central Intelligence Agency with Google which they alleged to be responsible for providing information and suggestions for the US’s national security.(1) According to these netizens, Google is gaining fame by “deceiving the public on its relationship with the US government under the slogan of liberty and democracy”. (2) Some have also expressed doubts about whether Google is really facing a problem from hackers, given its advanced technology. (3) In general, the anti-Google camp have focused on the politicization of the issue, giving an even greater exhibition of a conspiracy mentality than that released from official sources.

At the same time, a significant number of discussions within the online Chinese community reflected doubt about these arguments and were explicit in putting blame on the official Chinese response. The “pro-Google” side’s consensus is that Beijing’s reaction in regarding the situation as a purely commercial issue is illogical and should be at most regarded as a self-fulfilling prophecy. (4) Han Han, ranked by TIME as the most influential blogger in China, also criticized the Chinese censorship, saying that he was disappointed by the fact that some outstanding websites like YouTube and Facebook had left China, resulting in China becoming “the largest intranet in the world” (Han, 2010). Taking this line not only triggered vigorous reaction from the younger internet users in China, but also helped popularize the incident given Han’s high popularity in the online Chinese community.

As a result, the Google incident represents another bipolar reaction among the online Chinese community with a line of demarcation drawn between the new leftists, who call for strengthening the central government in order to address social inequality, and the liberals, who call for solving the social and political problems of China by respecting the Western liberal democratic ideals. Given the stalemate in the rivalry between the two camps over the previous decade, it is impossible for any issue in China to receive overwhelming support in the online community. In other words, as long as Beijing can interpret the Google issue along the new leftist ideological line, it is bound to receive a certain amount of backup no matter how justifiable or unjustifiable its behavior is seen as being. This is probably the rule of game for the foreseeable future.

1. Message ID 98660866, SNF, assessed on 1st APR, 2010
2. Message ID 98550023, SNF, assessed on 1st APR, 2010
3. Message ID 98577455, SNF, assessed on 1st APR, 2010
4. Message ID 98548159, SNF, assessed on 1st APR, 2010

References Google. (2010). A new approach to China: an update. Retrieved April 1, 2010, from The Google official Blog Han Han. (2010). Interview with Han Han. (Tudou, miantanzhe) People's Daily. (2010). China says Google breaks promise, totally wrong to stop censoring. People's Daily.

Simon Shen is a Visiting Fellow at Brookings Institution, Associate Professor in the Department of Social Sciences at the Hong Kong Institute of Education, and the co-editor of Online Chinese Nationalism and China's Bilateral Relations.

A Manga Canon?

By John E. Ingulsrud and Kate Allen

In a recent entry in the blog, The Manga Critic, Katherine Dacey begins a discussion on what titles to include in a manga canon.(i) She raises the questions of how to judge esthetic quality and whether a canon is appropriate for manga. These questions were also considered by cultural studies researcher, Yokota-Murakami Takayuki.(ii) He uses canonicity as a kind of litmus test to distinguish high culture works from those of low culture. He points out that few people are praised for reading manga, while many people are praised for reading canonical literary works, thus emphasizing the notion of a canon being a community’s body of valued or privileged works. In our book Reading Japan Cool, we raise the issue of authority: Who should compile a manga canon? Should it be the commentators, the researchers, or simply the readers in terms of popularity? As decisions are made on the content of the canon, the compilers have the power to include and exclude works and thus determine “good taste.”

These concerns of esthetic assessment and authority obscure the basic motive for having a canon. Historically, canons were developed from a need to teach and consequently to test. The Old Testament canon was developed for teaching and the authority was reflected in degrees of canonicity, with the Pentateuch or the Torah at the center and the Apocrypha on the periphery. The New Testament canon was compiled from a concern to maintain a correct understanding of a focal question: Who is Jesus? While these canons served to define the identities of communities, other canons served to define competencies. Beginning in 5th century China, civil service examinations were administered based on the knowledge of canonical works that spoke to the human condition, thus providing wisdom and morals. After all, successful candidates were assumed to be those who had integrity and the correct values. This idea of testing knowledge of the literary canon to select appropriate personnel was adopted widely in the 19th Century with the training of bureaucrats, such as the colonial Indian civil service.(iii) It also became the basis for centralized school curricula.

In the same way, a manga canon will develop out of a need to teach and to test. A symposium on manga in the university was held in June at the annual conference for the Japan Society for Studies in Cartoon and Comics. Speakers addressed the question of why manga should be taught as an academic subject. They also discussed how such courses could be taught. Yet no one dealt with the issue of what manga should be taught. As English literature professors could simply teach the works they liked, before testing was developed in the 19th Century,(iv) professors of manga studies also make their own personal selection. It is only when a common curriculum across institutions is sought, or when the media industry begins to demand personnel with “broad” and “conversant” knowledge of manga that the question of a manga canon will be addressed in earnest. Perhaps competing lists will be compiled, but eventually a manga canon will evolve. Already the argument has been made to teach manga and indeed several universities in Japan offer these courses, so the next logical question is the choice of manga to teach. This question opens up the knotty question of criteria. Will the manga works be chosen for their esthetic qualities? Or will the works be chosen for their capacity to speak to the human condition?

1. Katherine Dacey, The Manga Critic,(accessed September 25, 2009).
2. Yokota-Murakami Takayuki, Manga wa Yokubō Suru (Manga do desire) (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 2006), 176-180.
3. Christopher O’Reilly, Post-Colonial Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 17.
4. John C. Mathews, Examinations: A Commentary (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1985), 13-14.

John E. Ingulsrud is Professor of Applied Linguistics in the Department of International Studies at Meisei University. Kate Allen is Professor of Linguistics in the School of Global Japanese Studies at Meiji University. They are the authors of Reading Japan Cool: Patterns of Manga Literacy and Discourse.

"In the Footsteps of Marco Polo" Nominated for an Emmy ®

The documentary film In the Footsteps of Marco Polo has just received a News & Documentary Emmy ® nomination! See the announcement here.

Rowman & Littlefield publishes the widely praised companion volume to the film: In the Footsteps of Marco Polo: A Companion to the Public Television Film by Denis Belliveau and Francis O'Donnell.

About the Book

Ardent explorers and adventurers Denis Belliveau and Francis O'Donnell followed Marco Polo's route from beginning to end—starting in Venice and trekking through Central Asia, Afghanistan, and ultimately China—traveling 33,000 miles through twenty countries over two years; in jeeps, trains and rickshaws; astride horses and camels; and on foot. The authors artfully weave their own adventures encountering corrupt Uzbek warlords, rifle-wielding Afghanis, and Tibetan monks with Marco Polo's descriptions and experiences—as fresh and relevant today as when he first narrated it. Richly illustrated with Belliveau's stunning color photographs, this compelling book documents two journeys of a lifetime, undertaken centuries apart yet joined by unbreakable bonds of shared experience.

Visit our website for more information on the book!