published_or_final_version / Linguistics / Master / Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics

Univ., Mercator School of Management, Diss.--Duisburg Essen, 2008.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 1998. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 481-518).

This thesis explains the relationships between the British Expedition to China, the Qing state, and the Chinese maritime and river population during the Opium War (1839-1842). Drawing on scholarship on borderlands and frontiers as well as a variety of textual and visual sources, the thesis argues that the Opium War transformed vast coastal and waterway regions in Guangdong, Fujian, Zhejiang, and Jiangsu provinces into what can be conceptualized as "water borders." These water borders were initially characterized by the existence of the Qing Empire's sea frontier, where the Qing rulers, with the "inner-outer paradigm" in mind, strove to maintain control over those labeled as "outer barbarians," "Han evildoers," "villainous fishers," and the "Dan." The rise of a British wartime frontier in China and its adverse effects on local transportation as well as Chinese regional and international trade, however, destabilized southeast China's socioeconomic order. With the Qing forces weakened, Chinese piracy was unleashed, and given limited British naval power, there was an absence of any militarily hegemonic power in southeast China's waters. The British occupation and naval blockade, moreover, resulted in the emergence of overlaps and interstices of the Qing and British empires. On the one hand, the British Expedition and the Qing state conflicted over managing Chinese merchant craft and their trade. On the other hand, subject to neither Qing nor British control, many Chinese people living along the coast and rivers took advantage of the wartime opportunities and expanded their activities and networks to fissures of Qing control and the newly opened interstitial space. The thesis engages with Opium War studies by 're-reorienting' the war toward the coast and revealing the war's three "inner" aspects, namely the Qing efforts to "tame" the sea frontier, British rule in wartime China, and the Qing-British conflicts over controlling Chinese littoral people. The thesis, moreover, contributes to scholarship on late imperial and modern Chinese littoral societies. It argues that while the war marked the beginning of an unprecedented-scale interaction of Chinese coastal and riverine people with Westerners in China, the evolution of Chinese littoral societies during the war was in fact a continuation of the preceding centuries. The Opium War, the thesis argues, brought about one of the most dramatic political-social upheavals in late imperial littoral China. Furthermore, the thesis revisits British imperialism in late imperial and modern China by looking at the origins of the British "formal empire," limitations of British power, and wartime aids of the "indigenous" population for the British. The thesis also reassesses the significance of the Opium War in the history of the Qing Empire. It argues that for the Qing state, its anti-opium campaign and anti-British war in 1839-1842 constituted one of the recurrent threats on the maritime frontier for the empire's first two centuries. It also highlights some aspects of similarities and linkage of the Qing Empire's maritime and inland borders. Furthermore, the thesis reevaluates the Qing's state capacity during the Opium War and in the following years, highlighting its partial ability to control the empire's littorals. Last but not least, the water border framework constructed in the thesis serves to underscore some aspects of continuity in the political and socioeconomic development of late imperial southeast China, and to facilitate comparison between different frontiers in the Qing Empire, Southeast Asia, and beyond.

Over the past decade, road construction has come to represent Chinese engagement with Ethiopia. This study considers the lives of Chinese workers at the lower end of one such project in Tigray, northern Ethiopia. By examining the ways in which Chinese road workers tried to make sense of daily life on the construction site, I reveal the inherent contradictions of a state rhetoric that promoted 'win-win cooperation' ('huying huli hezuo') and 'friendly collaboration' ('youhao hezuo') between China and Africa, and demonstrate the local manifestations of the much-debated 'China Model'. Initial expectations coloured by state narratives, as well as the migrants' own experiences with domestic development, stood in sharp contrast to realities on the ground. Convinced of the goodwill nature of their activities, Chinese workers were puzzled by and resentful of the apparent ingratitude of local Ethiopians, their lack of cooperation, and, worse, repeated attempts to sabotage the construction work. Chinese workers' struggles with development in Africa, I argue, should be understood in relation to their background as upwardly mobile rural migrants at the bottom of the corporate hierarchy, successors of engineers dispatched under Mao Zedong who had enjoyed a respectable reputation at home - a reputation current workers felt they were about to lose - and as citizens aware of their country's status in the world as superior to Africa and inferior to the West. The workers sought to live up to Chinese ideals of development by demonstrating and promoting the virtues of self-development, simultaneous development, and entrepreneurialism. Ethiopians, however, did not concede to these ideas, and their lack of cooperation stirred resentment and expressions of self-pity on the part of the Chinese, who blamed the Ethiopian labourers, their suzhi (human quality), and wenhua (culture) for the limited success of the projects. What Chinese workers failed to realise was that the attitude of Ethiopians was in fact a response to asymmetrical and contested power relations that did not allow for win-win cooperation and friendly collaboration.

This thesis investigates the capacity of the newly introduced Chinese Special Economic Zones in Africa (CSEZAs) to deliver ‘cooperation' and ‘mutual development' to China and Africa. Referring to existing scholarship on other forms of liberal spatial economics, it addresses the conceptual, methodological and theoretical void in which the subject of CSEZAs evolves in academia. As extensive global interactive processes are identified in the schema of the CSEZA, this thesis advocates Andre Gunder Frank's Dependency Theory as the appropriate prism through which to explicate the new zone format. Empirical data about the seven CSEZAs outline the problematic and development-conducive aspects of the zone model. It is argued here that the failure to customise the SEZ model to the African context is what corrodes the developmental prospects of the CSEZAs. The Mauritius JinFei Economic and Trade Cooperation Zone is taken as an example of a problematic CSEZA. A detailed analysis of the Mauritian case allows a visualisation of the respective role of China and the African state in the CSEZA context. As the exploitative and non-developmental nature of the CSEZA model (in its current form), is established, this thesis concludes that the CSEZA gives a new interpretation to the traditional practice of dependency. This new version, nonetheless, exacerbates the dialectic development-underdevelopment processes integral to the global capitalist economy.

This thesis examines the deep bilateral tensions surrounding the East China Sea (ECS) disagreements between Japan and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the period from August 19th 2003 to June 18th 2008 from an actor-centred constructivist liberal viewpoint. The East China Sea disputes could be described as a conflicting difference of opinion over a) the demarcation of maritime territory and Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) in which potentially significant energy deposits exist and b) the ownership of the strategically important and historically sensitive Pinnacle (Senkaku/Diaoyu) Islands. This research addresses the question of why, given the fact that China and Japan have a strong interest in co-operation and stable relations with each other, small incidents in the ECS blow up into larger problems, cause approaches to the East China Sea to wax and wane, and move the relationship in a direction that goes against preferred national objectives? In attempting to unravel this puzzle, this work argues that domestic politics and popular negative sentiment have been the major issues that have greatly amplified and politicised the ECS problems and have significantly affected positive progress in negotiations aimed at managing and stabilising these disputes. By examining these, the thesis addresses the question of why China and Japan have been so constrained in their attempts to find a workable bilateral agreement over disputed energy resources and demarcation in the East China Sea. It also indirectly deals with the question of why the conflicting legal complexities surrounding these disagreements contributed to both states so fervently maintaining and defending their claims.