University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of Sociology

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of Sociology

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of Sociology

China has been a popular research subject in the past few decades, while the way to view China has witnessed dramatic changes. This research holds that it is important to systematically study the relationships between China studies and the social, economic and political forces guiding through analyzing the analytical angles selected by scholars have an impact upon how they perceive China. In the China studies communities, the ethnic Chinese scholars¡¦ knowledge of China in Southeast Asian is a noteworthy example: their identities imply diverse degree of Chinese history and cultural inheritance. The variety of ethnic Chinese identities represents the different epistemology of China. This research aims to add to the¡§Epistemology of China Studies¡¨ project by exploring the perspective of ethnic Chinese interpretation of China through Prof. Leo Suryadinata, who perceives China from a distant, yet culturally connected viewpoint. Through the sociology of knowledge approach, we could understand Leo Suryadina¡¦s China interpretation which involves an alien emotion in his academic and literature works, and also from the Southeast Asian Chinese society where he locates in. In Leo Suryadina¡¦s epistemology of China, China is an alien homeland and an object as he interprets it. On the other hand, as Leo Suryadinata¡¦s interpretational tool, China is a concept of ethnic Chinese identities with redefinition.

In response to the challenges presented by unprecedented growth in higher education (HE) since 1978, China adopted policy experimentation (PE) as a means of introducing and testing HE reforms. This study involves four in-depth case studies of important reforms facilitated by policy experiments at different junctures of China's HE development: early 1980s, mid-late 1980s, late 1990s, and early 2010s. Within each reform, two elite universities as 'experiment points' (shi dian) were selected. Through cross-case analysis informed by semi-structured interviews and extensive documentary analysis, the study offers a holistic historical perspective on how PE has been used to bring about institutional changes in China's higher education. The study documents different rationales used for implementing policy experiments. State actors use PE to exert pressure on universities to introduce reforms, to lower associated risks and to strengthen the nation's overall HE policymaking capacity in a volatile and extremely heterogeneous context. For their part, university leaders have adopted PE locally to navigate China's politically charged policymaking environment and to negotiate with state actors more favourable terms for reforms. Therefore, the PE approach enables state-university interactions and power negotiations that create and maintain 'strategy space' for consensus-building and institutional changes. It is an iterative process characterised by central-local interaction and intentionally ambiguous boundaries. The state, however, retains ultimate authority for legitimatising, selecting and expanding policy experiments. It is best understood as elite-enabled experimentation within existing political hierarchies. Over time, China's PE approach has become a semi-institutionalised mechanism for HE reforms. In the various policy experiments discussed in this study, PE functions as a productive, disciplinary and symbolic force at different stages of the policy process. Sometimes it appears to offer a genuinely productive mechanism for producing, identifying and negotiating innovative policy options that may be replicated at a larger scale; sometimes its essential use lies in its generated regulative effect; and sometimes it assumes more of a symbolic role allowing the government to acquire or consolidate reform legitimacy. Policy processes are mediated by these different uses of PE towards either reform efficacy or institutional conformity. This study situates these reforms within broader political, social, economic and historical contexts, and highlights the policy implications for higher education reform internationally.

Civil organisations play a key intermediary role in the middle layer between high- level policies and individual-level outcomes in international development. By triangulating among seven Chinese HIV civil organisations with varying organisational models, I examine intermediary activity that illuminates the mechanisms by which civil organisations operate and extends theory about organisations and civil society. Development studies research can benefit from multi-level analyses of organisational processes, which provide insight into how civil organisations shape institutions and networks. My case studies show several new mechanisms that enable organisations to survive and operate in politically fraught conditions, and they offer insight into the complex interactions that allow civil organisations to operate in such contexts. First, HIV civil organisations manage associative stigma resultant from their core activities. I observe that market relationships can buffer against associative stigma transfer for organisations, with many leaders re-positioning their organisations relative to stigmatised individuals, recasting them as employees, customers, and users rather than constituents. Second, these groups use hybrid organising to better manage political risks and build partnerships through selective coupling of organisational components. Hybrid strategies can provide resilience to threats and improve resource management in institutionally plural environments. Third, HIV civil organisations engage in detached, informal, and interactive collaboration with state actors, enabling greater autonomy and innovation among civil actors and reducing risk for state actors. I trace interactions between these strategic activities at the levels of organisational activities, structures, and networks, finding that reproducing ambiguity can sustain new types of collaborations. These findings suggest a need to reconsider the role civil organisations play in society, calling attention to organisational processes that allow these actors agency in brokering flows of information and shaping formation of networks. By viewing civil organisations as intermediaries, new directions can be identified for development policy and practice.

Societies in Hong Kong and Taiwan (Formosa) are not familiar with each as they are separate colonies taken by Britain and Japan respectively. This study explores a rare string linking the two communities through Wan-chu Lee and his son Nan-shong. Their evolving views on China reflect larger historical and social background on one hand and yet demonstrate agencies in choosing and forming individual choices regarding both political identities and postcolonial possibilities on other hand. In particular, their multiple views on China are full of individual judgments mediating among China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong as well as between global and regional forces.