pfdebate_criticalconstructive_february2013

7/30/2019 PFDebate_CriticalConstructive_February2013

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February: Chinas Rise

Critical Constructive

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INDEX

PRO: Pan Kritik Culture 2

PRO: Pan Kritik Culture & Capabilities 3PRO: Pan Kritik Democracy 4

PRO: Pan Kritik Democratic Peace/Clash Civilizations 5

PRO: Pan Kritik Economic Rise 6-12

PRO: Pan Kritik Economic Rise = Military Threat 13-14

PRO: Pan Kritik Identity & Behavior 15

PRO: Pan Kritik Identity 16

PRO: Pan Kritik Mercantilism 17

PRO: Pan Kritik Realism 18-19

PRO: Pan Kritik Regions/Ethnicity 20

PRO: Pan Kritik Trade Deficit 21PRO: Pan Kritik Impact 22-25

PRO: Pan Kritik Representations 26-28

PRO: Pan Kritik Answers to Positive Representation of China 29

CON: Schmitt Kritik China 30-31

CON: China Generic 32-35

CON: Schmitt Kritik Economics/Morality 36

CON: Schmitt Kritik Friendship 37

CON: Schmitt Kritik War 38-39

CON: Schmitt Kritik Impact 40-46

CON: Schmitt Kritik Framework 47

CON: Schmitt Kritik Answers to Kill Enemies 48

CON: Schmitt Kritik Answers to Schmitt was a Nazi 49

CON: Answers to Pan Kritik China Economic Rise 50

CON: Answers to Pan Kritik China/Taiwan Conflict 51-59


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Pro- Pan K- Culture

Cultural approaches to China treat culture and nationalism as a prerequisite to understanding politicsand international relations.

Pan, Prof IR @ Deakin Univ; 99 (Chengxin; Political Science; 51: 135; Understanding Chinese Identity in InternationalRelations: a Critique of Western Approaches)

Although there are debates over the nature of Chinese identity and the various ways of conceptualizing culture, thissecond perspective assumes that China is largely to be explained by its culture.23 This view can be traced back to anearlier generation of China experts. In 1965, John Fairbank, for example, observed that China was coterminous with theculture. Political life was motivated by loyalty to the cultural order, by culturalism, rather than by nationalism.24 It is aview that still has currency today. Lucian Pye suggests that China is not just another nation-state in the family of nations.China is a civilization pretending to be a state.25 More recently, James Watson argues that a shared sense of culturalidentity predated the construction of a national identity in China and thus conditioned its national identity. 26

If Chinese culture is the key to Chinas identity, attention to culture is a prerequisite for understanding Chinas recenttransformations. In so far as Western impact on China has been an important variable in the process of cultural change,this approach should offer a more nuanced understanding of Sino-Western relations than the capability approach. AsRobert Scalapino notes, national identity relates to the way in which a people, and especially a policy-making elite,perceive the essence of their nation in relation to others. It thus influences attitudes and policies alike, being thepsychological foundation for the roles and behavior patterns of a country in the international arena.27


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Pro- Pan K- Culture & Capabilities

Cultural and capabilities approach to Chinese international relations and politics are not mutuallyexclusive- they often go hand-in-hand.


Despite the distinction between capability and culture approaches and the heated debate over containment orengagement towards China, it would be misleading to suggest that there exist two distinctive groups of scholars neatlycorresponding to these two positions. It is difficult, for example, to pinpoint those who advocate an outright strategy ofeither containment or engagement without reservation. In most cases, confronted by the enigma of Chinese identity,China scholars have to take into account both capabilities and cultural and ideological differences in order to arrive atrounded views of China. Frequently, cultural accounts of Chinese identity make reference to material evidence, andproponents of the capability approach need to resort to the analysis of intention and perception arising from Chinesenationalism and strategic culture It is therefore little wonder that the incentive of free trade and the age-old balance ofpower strategy go hand-in-hand in the discussion of Western China policy. For these reasons, I shall put these approachestogether in examining their rather common weakness in the following section.

Capabilities and cultural representations fail to promote a better understanding of Chinese international

relations and politics.


To what extent have the approaches outlined above contributed to better understandings of China and its implications forglobal politics? In my view, there have been mixed results. On the one hand, the employment of the concept of Chineseidentity may help scholars take more comprehensive views of China because the term identity, unlike the conventionalbilliard-balls approach, implies dynamic, multifaceted processes rather than a static, black-and-white picture of China.On the other hand, for all their sophisticated analyses, these approaches have failed to deliver on their promises. I shallexamine why this has been the case and the implications of this failure for practice. Happily, more critical accounts ofChinese identity have now begun to emerge, which may provide us with opportunities to explore alternative ways ofunderstanding China.


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Pro- Pan K- Democracy

Focusing on democracy in China is a cultural approach to international relations and politics.


Pye argues that modernization has created for the Chinese an acute authority crisis, and that the lack of individualism,strong identification with guanxi (social connections) and the dominance of the state over society embedded in Chinastradition are, among other things, responsible for Chinas resistance to embrace democracy- the new moral order.30 Thisidentity crisis also finds expression in a cleavage between the government and the mass (particularly intellectuals) whichculminated in the Tiananmen incident in 1989.31 As Merle Goldman and others observe, a segment of Chinasintellectuals are beginning to identify with the opposition and not the prevailing regime and system . . . Chinese identityhad split into at least two or three. This disaggregation of the components of national identity has forced the question ofwhich component is primary, and hence the most deserving object of the intellectuals loyalty.32


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Pro- Pan K- Democratic Peace/Clash Civilizations

Democratic peace theory and clash of civilization arguments exemplify the cultural approach to Chinesepolitics and international relations.


While analysts debate the degree to which China can resist outside pressures for change, most in the West would probablyagree that a trend towards China becoming more like us should be encouraged. Moreover, given that there is a learningprocess involved in Chinas integration into international society,38 this trend is to some extent already under way.Despite some twists and turns, Chinas experience is well within that of other rapidly modernizing but destabilizingsocieties; and the characteristics of developed states are overwhelmingly determined by the deep structures and forces ofmodernization and democratization.39 Furthermore, based on the theory of democratic peace,40 democratic governancein China would be more conducive to the promotion of human rights and peace, and therefore an engagement policyaiming to bring China into the international society is considered necessary.

Nevertheless, many still believe that despite the transforming power of the West, the cultural differences will not easily goaway; indeed, some even argue that the differences are fundamental, and perhaps immutable. As Pye maintains, in aworld of grantedly irrational political systems, Chinas is possibly the most bizarre...China has a political system in whichaccountability seems to be absent altogether.41 Those confident about Chinas ultimate conversion should n o t beoverly-optimistic. As Perry Link puts it, If modern international culture does indeed become the first force in history todissolve Chinas notion of its moral uniqueness, that process will, at a minimum, take decades or centuries to finish.Before then, the core problem will remain.42 More ominously, a revival of Chinas Sino-centric worldview in line withthe rise of Confucianism in East Asia forms part of Samuel Huntingtons alarming prediction, (made in the larger contextof a resurgence of non-Western cultures and the decline of Western dominance after the Cold War), of a clash ofcivilizations.43


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Pro- Pan K- Economic Rise

There are no uniquely Chinese businesses- they are part of a global production network.

Pan, Prof IR @ Deakin Univ; 09 (Chengxin; Journal of Contemporary China; 18:58; What is Chinese about ChineseBusinesses? Locating the rise of China in global production networks)

As mentioned above, the conventional understanding of the challenge of Chinese businesses as a China threat largely hinges on theassumption of Chinese businesses as something uniquely Chinese. This assumption, however, by obscuring the transnationaldimension of Chinese businesses, cannot take us very far in understanding the complex nature of the China challenge. In thiscontext, we need to look at an alternative approach to understanding the identity of Chinese businesses. Focusing on the globalproduction networks, this approach can enable us to simultaneously interrogate the assumed Chineseness of Chinese businesses andreveal their transnational characteristics. But before doing so, a brief discussion of the emergence of global production networks in theworld economy and the consequences for the transformation of national economies is in order.

Needless to say, the world economy has not always been the way it is today. For much of the past few centuries, it was characterizedprincipally by divisions between national economies. With mercantilism dominating the scene, the world economy was subject

strongly to national monopolies and trade restrictions.18

Indeed, economy was believed to be so closely bound up to the nation thatLouis XIVs minister Colbert once said that the might and greatness of a State is measured entirely by the quantity of silver it

possesses.19

Consequently, not only did the size and influence of a national economy come to signify the nations strength and

determination,20

but economic competition was routinely taken as both an embodiment of, and a catalyst to, interstate conflict. Inmid-eighteenth century India, for example, the commercial contest between the East India Company and the Compagnie des Indes wasovertly backed by the military and naval resources of their respective home country, Britain and France.

However, with the increasing globalization of economic activities over the past half a century or so, the category of nationaleconomies has begun to appear less relevant and less meaningful. Although mercantilism has lingered on to this day, literature ineconomic development studies argues that exclusive attention to the nation-state as the conventional unit of analysis is becoming

less useful. The argument is that although much of the organization of economic activities may still take place within stateboundaries, many changes in the world economy increasingly tend to slice through those boundaries.

21In his book The Work of

Nations, Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, called into question the continued reference to anAmerican economy. The idea of an American economy is becoming meaningless, he wrote, as most factors of production such as

capital, technology, factories, and equipment are no longer constrained within national borders.22

In a similar vein, Kenichi Ohmaeargues that it not only makes little sense today to speak of Italy or Russia or China as a single economic unit, but it is increasingly

difficult to attach an accurate national label to the goods and services now produced and traded around the world.23

The non-alignment between economy and national space may well have been exaggerated. As Peter Dicken notes, the placeless TNC

(transnational corporation) remains a myth.24

Yet, while not suggesting the disappearance of national economies, it is fair to say thatnational economies, particularly in the regions of North America, Europe, and East Asia, have become increasingly transnationalized.While it would be foolish to argue that Chinese businesses no longer have much to do with China, I argue that the context in which

they have emerged and developed cannot be disconnected from such a re-organization of economic activities which increasinglytranscends national borders. Much as they continue to retain some Chineseness in various ways, many (clearly not all) Chinesebusinesses are also deeply affected by transnational activities.


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China is part of the global production network- massive foreign direct investment, outsourcing andsubcontracting.


Two interrelated aspects can best illustrate Chinas enmeshment into the global production networks: its connection withforeign direct investment (FDI), and its role as a major destination for outsourcing and subcontracting by TNCs.

According to UNCTADs Transnationality Index, FDI flows are closely linked to the transnationality of host countries.33

Chinas extensive exposure to FDI is therefore illustrative of the transnational characteristics of what are customarilycalled Chinese businesses. Between 1985 and 2005, annual net FDI inflows into China grew from US$1 billion toUS$72 billion. In the same period, China took in more than US$600 billion in FDI, 12 times the total stock of FDI Japan

received between 1945 and 2000. Since the early 1990s, FDI inflows have further accelerated in light of Beijingsdecision to allow a new form of FDI called wholly foreign-owned enterprises (WFOEs). By the early 2000s WFOEsaccounted for 65% of new FDI in China. Since 1993, China has consistently been the largest recipient of FDI among

developing countries.34

In parallel to the massive inflows of FDI is a growing trend for TNCs to outsource and subcontract production and evenservices to China. According to the 2006 World Investment Report, China ranked highly as one of the most-favoredlocations of both the worlds largest TNCs and the largest TNCs from developing countries. To date, corporations from190 countries and regions, which include 450 of the Fortune global top 500 multinational corporations, have invested in

China.35

By one account, 60,000 foreign-owned factories were opened between 2003 and 2005. What these figuresdemonstrate is a deepening integration of the Chinese economy into the global production networks. In this process, as

Shenkar describes, Chinese manufacturers initially serve as component suppliers to foreign buyers and OriginalEquipment Manufacturers (OEMs). As component suppliers, the Chinese companies produce to the specifications offoreign firms who then distribute and sell the product in world markets or embed it in one of their end products. In thenext phase, very often entire operations are subcontracted to China, with the foreign firm maintaining oversight,

branding, and marketing.36

Amidst the global shift in production, China is turned into East Asias main producer of finalproducts and final export platform. Take Chinas computer-related products for example: nearly three-quarters of thoseproducts are made by Taiwanese companies on the mainland, and those companies in turn rely on OEM contracts withJapanese and US companies. Consequently, a transnational production chain takes shape, a chain which links together theworlds most developed countries such as the US and Japan, semi-periphery economies such as Taiwan, and developing

states like China.37


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The identity of Chinese businesses are changing- they are not uniquely Chinese.


Just as Chinese businesses are in many ways transformed by FDI inflows and the outsourcing and subcontracting processes, so too isthe identity of Chinese businesses. If anything, their Chineseness has been profoundly complicated by their location within the

global and regional production networks, where they are interwoven with non-local or non-Chinese businesses.38

The penetrationand dominance of non-Chinese elements in the Chinese economy, taking the form of foreign control over major processes andcomponents of production in China, such as exports, technology, marketing, and profit, calls into question the conventionalunderstanding of Chinese businesses as Chinese businesses.

Firstly, in relation to exports, what are commonly labeled as Chinese businesses can in many cases be more suitably described asChinese subsidiaries of global multinationals and Chinese joint ventures with businesses from the industrialized countries. ThoseChinese subsidiaries, or foreign funded enterprises (FFEs), accounted for about two-thirds of the total growth in Chinese exports

between 1994 and mid-2003. While exports of industrial machinery from China increased 20-fold in real terms between 1993 and2003, FFEs share of them jumped from 35% to 79%. Over the same period, exports of computer equipment increased from US$716million to US$41 billion, with the FFEs share rising from 74% to 92%. This pattern, as Gilboy points out, repeats itself in almost

every advanced industrial sector in China.39

Arriving at a similar conclusion, Yasheng Huang observed that foreign firms had

achieved majority controls over foreign investment enterprises in 21 out of 28 Chinese manufacturing industries.40

In 2001, 11Chinese enterprises were among the worlds top 500 businesses, but not a single one was from the manufacturing sector.

Secondly, the dominant position of non-Chinese businesses in Chinas production and exports is echoed and underpinned by asimilar pattern in relation to technology, services, branding and marketing. In China, foreign companies manage virtually all

intellectual property and account for 85% of the countrys technology exports.41

Gavin Heron, managing director ofTBWA/Shanghai, said that China is a story of international brands, not local ones . . . As soon as a local brand has any traction,

theyre bought out by a multinational.42 Indeed, based on their technology and branding superiority, many foreign companies havesecured their supremacy in Chinas production (such as delivery dates, industry and quality standards, design specifications) withoutactual ownership over production. For example, through control of industry standardsa phenomenon known as WintelismMicrosoft and Intel retain huge influence over access to the PC market without producing PCs themselves. Similarly, brand-nameproducers such as Levi-Strauss, the GAP, Reebok and Nike enjoy strong control over a wide range of labor-intensive consumer goods,

such as clothing and footwear, which are produced by buyer-driven commodity chains.43

It is then not surprising that the lack of a domestic technology base has placed Chinese companies in many industries at the mercy oftheir multinational counterparts, especially in terms of technology access. The transnational alliance that controlled the core DVDtechnology, for example, initially demanded significant licensing fees from Chinese DVD manufacturers, and only reached agreement

on a reasonable fee after several rounds of prolonged negotiations.44

Or to take another example, after more than a decade as a juniorjoint venture partner to the global giant Volkswagen, Shanghai Auto still had little capability to compete as an independent car maker.

Volkswagen even publicly expressed doubt whether it would continue to need its Shanghai partner after Chinas entry into the WTOThe only strategy left for Shanghai Auto was to start a second joint venture with GM.

45The situation has not been helped by the

Chinese governments decision to abandon the plan of developing a purely indigenous auto industry.46

Pan Continues


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Pan ContinuedNo text deleted

More importantly, dominance in the areas of capital, production, export, and technology often translates directly into dominance overvalue and profit. Of course, this does not mean that Chinese businesses have not benefited from their interactions with globalbusinesses, since there are some Chinese companies doing well from export earnings. Still, US, Japanese and European multinationalscontinue to maintain the added value and technological lead. It is estimated that between 60% and 80% of the value of all Chineseexports are processed (imported) components. Since the import content of the FFEs is often much higher, their exports from China

yield still less value-added for the national economy than the roughly equal value of exports from national firms.47

Thanks toWintelism, leading foreign enterprises, through controlling the sales channel and market standards, continue to control the realizationof value. For example, Intel earns as much as 10% of its total US$30 billion a year in revenue from selling computer microprocessor

chips to China.48

Given this trend, Japans recent alarm over the fall of its personal computer exports to the United States as opposedto Chinas rise in its PC exports seems to miss the point. For one thing, those trade figures failed to reflect the fact that the computers

assembled in China rely on high value-added technology from Japan and elsewhere.49


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Greater China and their diaspora are not Chinese businesses. There is no cultural coherence, unity, orhomogeneity.


To some observers, the dominance of non-Chinese businesses, instead of signifying a weakening Chineseness ofChinese businesses, seems to disguise the very existence of a more or less coherent Chinese business network on agrander scale. It is argued that many of the so-called non-Chinese businesses in China, upon a closer examination, areoverseas Chinese businesses in Greater China or the Chinese diaspora: Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, and overseas

Chinese in Southeast Asia and elsewhere. Variably known as the bamboo network and an invisible empire,62

theChinese network not only seems to share common Chineseness, but it also indicates the far-flung reach of Chinese

businesses in the global economy.

In a sense, some forms of Chinese business networks across Greater China do exist. Having said that, their existencecannot be viewed in isolation from the larger global economic networks. Hong Kong, for example, has been a majorsource of foreign direct investment in China. But this does not mean that the origins of the investment are necessarilybased in Hong Kong or even come from China itself (known as round-tripping). Breslin notes that through theirsubsidiary offices in Hong Kong, some foreign businesses have been able to disguise their involvement in the Chineseeconomy. For example, it is estimated that about 80% of Japanese FDI in Hong Kong was subsequently reinvested inChinas Guangdong Province. While it appeared to be Hong Kong investment, it was in effect Japanese investment in

China.63

Similarly, by analyzing the flow of final trade in the East Asian region, Hart-Landsberg and Burkett note that thebusiness network of Greater China, rather than reflecting a growing regional independence and balance, is formed

primarily in response to the changing needs of transnational corporate production networks.

64

Thus, even in theirGreater China guises, Chinese businesses are not a uniform, self-contained cultural entity, but are underpinned anddefined by extensive production networks between greater China and the rest of the world. In other words, theimagined Chinese transnational ethnicity and the implied new economic relationships among Greater China need to

be put in the context of the global production networks whose main driving force has been TNCs.65

The extensive linkage between overseas Chinese businesses and the global production networks means that theirChineseness inevitably lacks the cultural coherence or homogeneity as projected by some popular images of Chinesebusinesses. Granted that it may be possible to detach overseas Chinese businesses from the wider global networks, theirso-called common ethnic and cultural bonds often belie the great variation among the vast Chinese communities.Obviously, the Chinese diaspora, spanning across a diversity of regions and national spaces and made up by different andlocalized communities and identities, do not owe loyalties to a single center, let alone a political center in Beijing.

Taiwans restive quest for a new Taiwanese identity aside, in Singapore, where what Chinese actually means is alsosubject to fierce debate, ethnic Chinese see themselves as Singaporean first and huaren (ethnic Chinese) second, if ever.

It would be a horror to them if one now still calls them overseas Chinese or huaqiao, the sojourners.66

Pan Continues next page


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Pan Continuedno text deleted

Naturally, underlying such localized identities and loyalties are often parochial and divergent values and interests amongChinese businesses. In business dealings, the Taiwanese often distrust their Hong Kong or mainland counterparts,

whereas Singaporeans are acutely conscious of deep value differences between themselves and the mainland Chinese.67

In short, the Chinese business networks in Greater China seem to bear more resemblance to a global patchwork of

many different enterprises that may have little or no respect or love for one another.68

The notion of Greater China asa singular, unified business network, once enthusiastically embraced by mainland China, has now lost much of its appeal

there.69

As one mainland Chinese scholar put it, we reject the concept of Greater China ... Overseas Chinese come not

because they are patriotic but because of investment benefits.70

In other words, what draws Chinese businessestogether across Cultural China is not so much their shared Chineseness, but a common capitalist desire for wealth andprofit.


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Chinese businesses are internally divided.


Against this background, it is not surprising that the internal diversity and fragmentation of Chinese businesses is foundnot only in Greater China, but also within China proper. Two factors are relevant here. One is Chinas decentralization-oriented reforms. As Peter Nolan notes, with a strong tradition of relatively autonomous local government, Chinas

decentralization has only reinforced this autonomy tradition in business.71

The other relates to the nation-wide hunger for

global linkages.72

Most clearly symbolized by its WTO entry, Chinas integration into the global production networks hasbeen at the expense of the national coherence of Chinese businesses. In a zealous drive to join tracks with internationalstandards (yu guoji jiegui), many Chinese companies have not only developed a dependence on transnational capital and

technology, but more remarkably, some have shied away from horizontal collaboration with their domestic counterparts,especially if such collaboration crosses regional or bureaucratic boundaries. As Gilboy points out, Chinas best firmsare among the least connected to domestic suppliers: for every $100 that state-owned electronics and telecom firms spend

on technology imports, they spend only $1.20 on similar domestic goods.73

Small wonder that the Chinese economy has

been variously described as a cellular economy, federalism, Chinese-style, or de facto federalism.74

In this context,even if those Chinese businesses share the same national space and are all run by Chinese, they may still be a long wayfrom, if ever, forming a unitary, coherent Chinese economic actor as the popular images such as a fire-breathing dragonwould have us believe.


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Pro- Pan K- Economic Rise = Military Threat

The argument that Chineses economy increases their military threat and promotes mercantilism rests onthe assumption of the Chineseness of Chinas business.


According to Peter Navarro, the author of The Coming China Wars, Chinas unfair, mercantilist trading practices suchas the China price, the going global strategy, and its voracious appetite for energy and resources constitute what he callsweapons of mass production. Testifying before the Congress-mandated USChina Economic and Security ReviewCommission in early 2007, the University of California business professor charged that these weapons of mass

production have been allowing China to conquer one new export market after another.8

In this context, many security analysts and practitioners agree that the economic challenge will have far-reaching militaryand foreign policy implications. The Pentagon argues that the performance of Chinas economy is a main driving force

behind its domestic defense expenditures, foreign acquisitions, and indigenous defense industrial developments.9

Indeed,the emergence of Chinese businesses has been seen as a harbinger of the beginning of a historic power transition from theUS to China. Like previous power transitions in the international system, it is argued that the rise of China does not bode

well for international peace and stability.10

For Navarro, coordinated centrally by the Chinese government, themercantilist practices of Chinese businesses do not just help China gain increasing economic and financial advantage overUS businesses, but also contribute to Chinas rapid military modernization and lay the groundwork for the coming China

wars.11

At this juncture, what is remarkable about these analyses of Chinese businesses and business practices is not so much their

attention to the aspect of economic and military threat. Rather, for the purpose of this essay, it is their grounding ofChinese businesses in an unproblematic, fixed, and more or less coherent actor called China, whereby Chinese businessesacquire their Chineseness. For example, the China price is believed to be produced in the unique stew of Chinas

evolving business culture,12

and the conquest of the global market by Chinese products is often traced back to theChinese government. In the words of Hornig and Wagner, the desk drawers of party strategists are filled with detailed

plans promoting national industries from automaking to biotechnology.13

Indeed, frequently the assumption of theChineseness about Chinese businesses goes so far as to conjure up a scenario of a whole country engaged in concertedefforts of building national greatness through sustained economic development and aggressive business strategies. Toillustrate this point, it helps to refer to a bill metaphor used by some commentators, with the bill symbolizing the costsincurred by the US as a result of the influx of Chinese cheap imports. On the bill, as the metaphor goes, the costs forAmerica, apart from the big trade deficits with China, also include domestic layoffs, the relocation of entire industries,

cutbacks for research and development and the downfall of the once- almighty dollar. And the payee? A population ofbillions.

14In other words, what is behind Chinese businesses is nothing short of the whole Chinese nation.


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Pro- Pan K- Economic Rise = Military Threat

There is no Chinese nationalist economic threat- they are enmeshed in the global economy.


The complexities of the identity of Chinese businesses are reflected in both the extensive intermingling of non-local ornon-Chinese businesses with their Chinese counterparts and, as a result of such processes, the fragmentation of theapparently homogeneous Chinese businesses. As a consequence, the conventional assumption of their exclusiveChineseness seems no longer able to do justice to these complexities. Relying on the nation-state as the primary unit ofanalysis, the state- centric assumption is not only prone to a blindness to the transnational dimension of the Chinese

economy, but also tends to exaggerate Chinese power in the global political economy,25

or even mistake China for amodel for national economic development. As Hart-Landsberg and Burkett point out, Chinas economic experience

cannot be understood in national or even inter-national terms, as if Chinas gains create opportunities for policy makersin other countries to promote their own national restructuring in ways that benefit their respective working-class

majorities.26

In other words, economic development in China, far from being predominantly a national phenomenon, hasa distinctively transnational or global dimension. This transnationality is characteristic of many sectors of the Chineseeconomy, but the main focus here will be on manufacturing, not least because this sector, directly linked to the Made inChina phenomenon, has attracted most attention in mainstream media and scholarship.

The paper utilizes the global production networks (GPN) framework to examine the transnational characteristics ofChinese manufacturing businesses. Global production networks are a form of contemporary capitalist development thatincreasingly involves the detailed disaggregation of stages of production and consumption across national boundaries,

under the organizational structure of densely networked firms or enterprises.27

Leading the way of this development aremodern multinational companies, whose strategies, as Kenichi Ohmae argues, are no longer shaped and conditioned byreasons of state but, rather, by the desireand the needto serve attractive markets wherever they exist and to tap

attractive pools of resources wherever they sit.28

Not surprisingly, these strategies lead to the continued expansion of thecapitalist production networks to a global scale. As a result, the social origins and production of various productionmaterials, labor, capital, information, technology, design, management, marketing, and consumption are no longer rigidlytied to fixed, singular localities or nationalities, thus making it increasingly difficult and problematic, if not impossible, toidentify businesses and their practices in exclusively national terms. With its emphasis on production and its transnationalprocesses, the GPN framework allows a better understanding of the intricate linkshorizontal, diagonal, as well as

vertical that form multi- dimensional, multi-layered lattices of economic activity.29


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Pro- Pan K- Identity & Behavior

Traditional Western depictions of Chinese identity and behavior in international relations are positivistand ethnocentric in their assumptions and foreclose alternative, richer understandings of Chinese

identity.


The past decade or so has seen a growing interest in China among academics, policy-makers and the general public. Anemerging body of literature in the fields of Chinese studies and international relations has centred on Chinas unsettled,complex identity.2 With the abrupt end of the Cold War, and the new dynamics of world affairs, this is hardly surprising.Central to this questioning process is the concern about what China now is, or more specifically, how China-perhaps theonly remaining communist great power-will change, behave, or survive in the decades to come.

The aim of this paper is to examine how the Chinese identity question is posed in the recent international relationsliterature. Beginning with an overview of dominant Western approaches, an appraisal of them suggests that while theyoffer some insights into the transformations that China is undergoing, at their core they are positivist and ethnocentric intheir assumptions, and consequently they foreclose a richer understanding of China. I argue that the issue of Chineseidentity in international relations is not an objective problem to be solved within Chinas boundaries, but a challenge tothe conventional wisdom and practice that dominate international relations theorising and policy-making.


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Pro- Pan K- Identity

Collapse of the Soviet Union and bipolarity turned China into the new Other that structures U.S.identity. Problems with Chinese identity are as much a crisis with the West as it is internal problems with

China.


As Michael Shapiro notes, the making of the Other as something foreign is thus not an innocent exercise indifferentiation. It is closely linked to how the self is understood.79 Hegel, Ranke and other Western philosophers ofhistory have long usedChinaasaconstructagainstwhichtomeasureandrevelintheirownmarvellous European progress.80 Inthis context, it is safe to say that the growing Western interest in Chinese identity has much to do with the loomingproblem of how to project and construct a Western (American) identity after the end of the Cold War. Huntington puts itbluntly, If being an American means being committed to the principles of liberty, democracy, individualism, and privateproperty, and if there is no evil empire out there threatening those principles, what indeed does it mean to bean American,and what becomes of American national interests?81 Hence the need to replace the former Soviet Union with a newOther in order to distinguish the self. As Bruce Cumings notes,

for us, China is still a metaphor. It is a metaphor for an enormously expensive Pentagon that has lost its bearings and thatrequires a formidable renegade state to define its mission (Islam is rather vague, and Iran lacks necessary weight). Chinais a metaphor for some conservatives who no longer have a Left worthy of serious attack. It is a metaphor for Americanidealists in search of themselves, who see it as their defining mission to bring democratic perfection to a flawed andignorant world. And it is a metaphor for an American polity that imagines itself coterminous with mankind, and istherefore incapable of understanding true difference.82

Chinas identity-crisis is as much a matter of the Wests crisis of identity, as it is about the transformations that are at

present occurring in China. The crisis reflects not only the increasing complexities of China, but also the many re-adjustments facing the West in the absence of the Soviet Other and the all-too-familiar bipolar structure which has forlong served as a point of reference in mainstream international theory and practice. More importantly, in response to theuncertainties both in China and at home, some in the West seem content to rekindle another Cold War-style game byadvancing the notion of the China threat. This may well offer a form of comfort in the short-term, but therepresentations of China and the West it trades upon are misleading and potentially dangerous. The recent revelationthat the mainstream theories that underpinned a whole generations understanding of the Soviet behaviour in the Cold Warwere an illusion, should warn us that a similar mistake should not be made in the case of China.83


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Pro- Pan K- Mercantilism

Chinese economic nationalism is accomplished through globalization- foreign direct investment, stockexchanges, and multilateral trade organizations. No neomercantilist threat.


This is not to say that Chinas political and business leaders do not want to construct a coherent national economy.Clearly, the locations of the four original special economic zones have been chosen by the Chinese government with a

view to maximizing their attraction to investment from ethnic Chinese living outside China.75

Also, seen as the maindriving force behind Chinese companies going global strategy, Beijing has sought to assemble a national team in globaleconomic competition. Thus, some scholars argue that China is nationalising globalization: pursuing a policy of

selective and strategic integration that bends globalization to Chinas long-term nation-building goals.76

Such anationalist effort is doubtless present and significant, but in relation to Chinese businesses, thus far the Chinesegovernments policy has been imbued with ambivalence. While the dream of rebuilding Chinas national greatnessthrough economic development remains at the core of the official discourse, the main path to that dream has been throughglobalization. As Crane puts it, while there exists a strong impulse to defend the imagined national economy, the official

line is that this must be accomplished in concert with global capital.77

In explaining Chinas policy on foreigninvestment, for example, Zhang Yansheng, director of the Institute for International Economic Research under theNational Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) put it bluntly:

In an effort to introduce outside competitors to further promote the transformation of the market economy, weprefer strategic alliances with foreign investors . . . Despite more wholly foreign-owned companies aiming atpreventing technology spillover, we will give more preferential treatment to the multinationals with R&D

centers in China.78

Importantly, such strategy has consistently figured in Chinas official discourse of national economic development, firstadvanced by Deng Xiaoping, and then adhered to by his successors Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao. For example, addressingthe APEC CEO Summit in November 2004, President Hu Jintao promised that the Chinese government would createnew ways of attracting foreign investment, and push for greater reform in government administrative systems by building

a predictable and more transparent management system for sectors open to foreign investment.79

If anything, thisdenotes both the development of a sense of international responsibility on the part of Chinese leaders, and the

internationalization of the Chinese state more generally.80

Thus, it should come as no surprise that economic nationalismin contemporary China has taken on some rather odd forms such as the existence of favorable policies to foreign directinvestment, the rush to list companies on foreign stock exchanges, and the eagerness to join multilateral trade

organizations. All of these, according to Crane, are hardly the actions of a staunchly neomercantilist power.81


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Pro- Pan K- Realism

Structural realism and neorealism approach to international relations treats identity as fixed andinescapable. Identity is not pre-given but subject to redefinition. Identity is relational- the definition of

self and other, threat and interest have a profound effect on national security policy.


The concept of identity is much in vogue in the social sciences and in the international relations discipline in particular;but identity has always been integral to modern politics and social life.3 The past neglect of identity can be largelyattributed to the dominant assumption that identity is a kind of fixed, bounded, identifiable object in the natural world.4This view is also manifest in mainstream international relations theories, notably, neorealism. From this vantage point,the state can be described in terms of a body ... with a head of state who governs its members according to thedictates of reason or raison detat. The state-as-body is regarded as of a natural kind and an inescapable fact.5 Theprimordialist assumption of fixed state identity in international relations- often known as a billiard-balls approach-takesit for granted that all states have a limited number of common traits, such as a will to survive and a will to power.Ironically, this limited number of traits is further reduced by structural realism or neorealism. Neorealism brushesaside all attributes of states except their capabilities, and accounts for international politics in terms of the distribution ofcapabilities and the anarchic relations amongst states.7

However, the inability of the dominant paradigm to explain both the end of the Cold War and subsequent transformationshas prompted many international relations scholars to question the notion of a fixed identity and explore the complexitiesof the inter-subjective domain of international politics. As a result, identity has been reformulated as role-specificunderstandings and expectations about self in the social world; as the basis of interests, identities, rather thanexogenously pre-given, are subject to redefinition.8 This occurs in an interactive context that leads to the mutualconstruction of people (identities) and societies.9 Identity construction is relational; the notion of identity involves

negation or difference- something is something, not somethingelse.10 Understanding identity in international relations inthis manner seems to have more explanatory potential than orthodox notions. As Peter Katzenstein notes, Definitions ofidentity that distinguish between self and other imply definitions of threat and interest that have strong effects on nationalsecurity policies.11 These alternative approaches to identity and international relations have been increasingly calledconstructivism.


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Pro- Pan K- Realism

Realist framing of Chinas rise is done in terms of balance of power leading to calls for containment of

China.


As perceptions of Chinas power have changed, so has this approachs treatment of China. Long before Chinas rapideconomic growth in the past few decades, research interest in China paled beside an overriding concern with moreimportant power relations, first among European states and later between the two superpowers in the Cold War. AsGeorge F. Kennan once remarked, China doesnt matter very much. Its not very important. Its never going to bepowerful.13 To the extent that mainstream international history was told as the story of the European interstate systemand its expansion into the larger world, it is not surprising that, as a tottering imperial power, a sedentary civilisation, anda nascent nation-state, China received relatively little attention from the international relations community.

With Chinas dramatic emergence as a powerful political and economy force, there has been a significant shift in interestin China. Nicholas Krist of argues that, The rise of China, if it continues, maybe the most important trend in the world forthe next century ... Even in failure China could be hugely important.14 Typical questions asked by realists are: WasChina a rising power, and if so, how fast and in what direction?15 Chinas development is accommodated amongst theoldest problems in international relations; ever since the rise of Assyria and Sparta, the perennial question has been howthe international community can accommodate the ambitions of newly powerful states. 16 China is thus compared withsuch emerging powers as Germany and Japan at the turn of the twentieth century, and the question that naturally followsis whether China will seek to become a hegemon or act as a responsible power in the new international settling. 17

The imperative of the self-help international system leads some to argue that the consequence of Chinas rising power isclear-China is so big and so naturally powerful that it will tend to dominate its region even if it does not intend to do so asa matter of national policy.18 With the end of the Cold War and the rise of China, the previous balance of power in EastAsia has collapsed. In this context, to curb the threat of Chinese ascendancy is to resort to the conventional wisdom of the

balance of power strategy. As Gerald Segal warns, Without a balance of power, Southeast Asians are vulnerable.19Along this line of argument, many have called for a containment policy towards China.

Realist anarchy problematic and balance of power treat China as a unitary actor and are only concerned

with Chinas power, not its soul.


This school of thought stems from realism. Informed by this orthodoxy, scholars who adopt it believe that the nature ofinternational politics is predetermined by anarchy, which, in the absence of central authority in the international realm,necessitates relentless struggle for survival and power among nations. Accordingly, what matters most is the balance ofpower based on the single important attribute of states- capabilities. These are embodied in a number of tangible factorssuch as territory, resources, geopolitical importance, economic as well as military power. From this point of view, Chinais seen primarily as a unitary state actor, and it is mainly material capabilities that matter in analysing Chinese identity. Oras Robert Zoellick puts it, realists have been concerned with Chinas power, not its soul.12


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Pro- Pan K- Regions/Ethnicity

Focusing on regionalism, ethnicity, island disputes, and self-determination are examples of the culturalapproach to Chinese international relations and politics.


Others discern a crisis in terms of a regional disparity roughly between south and north (or east and west, littoral andhinterland areas).33 On a variety of counts, differences between the two regions are remarkable. Compared to the latter,the former is considered rich, dynamic, outward-looking, amenable to Western influence, and so on. It is argued thatuneven development between the two regions bolsters regionalism, and this trend, according to Segal, soon raises thesensitive question of the integrity of the modern Chinese state.34 Given the apparent superiority of the south, it appearsthat in the struggle over Chinas future national culture, young Chinese are embracing the southern-oriented open identityand rejecting the new Confucian nationalism.35

Further contradictions are evident between nationalism and globalism,36 and between state nationalism and ethnicnationalism.36 Though the tension between nationalism and globalism is not unique to China, the transition from empireto nation is a relatively recent development for China, especially in comparison with many European nations. It is ironicthat just having undergone its culturalism to nationalism metamorphosis, China must immediately face the challenge ofglobalism. In addition, the growing centrifugal forces emanating from Chinas ethnic minorities, as well as from Taiwan,have added another dimension to the national identity crisis. At stake here is Chinese tradition of great unity(dayitong), abelief undermined by minority groups cries for self-determination or independence.


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Pro- Pan K- Trade Deficit

Focus on Chinas trade surplus with the U.S. ignores their deficit with East Asian countries.


This point is as valid to labor-intensive products as it is to the high-tech sectors. A Barbie doll made in China is sold forUS$20 in Western markets, but only about 35 cents is retained by the Chinese. What China got in the past few years isonly some pretty figures, said Mei Xinyu of the Commerce Ministrys research institute; American and foreign

companies have gotten the real profit.50

Acutely aware that this uneven distribution of profit in China could be to theiradvantage, in April 2006 executives from Microsoft, Starbucks, Costco, Weyerhaeuser and Amazon.com went to greatlengths to extend a warm welcome to the visiting Chinese president Hu Jintao. Those executives, as one commentator putit, were all eager to show the Chinese leader their appreciation for his efforts in providing American businesses with an

ample supply of cheap labor, a stable currency exchange and an affable investment climate.51 These multinationalsunderstood better than most that thanks to the global economic networks, Chinese business meant not just Chinesebusiness, but their business as well.

By now, it should become clearer that products made in China are not necessarily made by China, nor does the bulk ofthe profits necessarily go Chinas way. All this has important implications for rethinking the identity of Chinesebusinesses and the China challenge they often come to symbolize. To put it simply, situated in the global productionnetworks, China has served mainly as the manufacturing conduit. Through this conduit, the regional deficit is shifted:even as China runs surpluses with demand countries in North America and Europe, it runs deficits with supplier states

in East Asia.52

Frequently, counted as Chinese exports, the burgeoning sales of non-Chinese manufacturing operationsin China to the US, for example, leave an

impression of Chinas rapid rise into an economic superpower status.53 Looked at through the GPN prism, however, thisimage seems at least exaggerated, if not misleading, given that a large proportion of American imports from China are

products made in joint venture or wholly foreign-owned enterprises.54

As China recorded a US$200 billion trade surpluswith the United States in 2005, at the same time it accumulated a US$137 billion trade deficit with the rest of Asia. In2003, China took in 4050% of Asias exports, accounting for all of Taiwans and the Philippines export growth and overhalf of each of Japans, Malaysias, South Koreas and Australias. Similarly, while China recorded a US$25 billionsurplus with Japan in 2000, this surplus would evaporate if we take into account Japans US$26 billion surplus with HongKong, the main port of entry for Japanese goods into southern China. Indeed, more than half of Sino Japanese trade is

now conducted among Japanese companies.55

Therefore, in the global production networks bilateral trade figuresbetween nations seem to distort more than they clarify.


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Pro- Pan K- Impact

Capabilities and cultural approaches to international relations and politics are positivist epistemologiesthat treat China like an object that is knowable through rational deliberation. This leads to bipolar and

dichotomous representations of self and other, U.S. and China. When these theories fail scholars resort

to the Orientalist enigma that the East is unknowable instead of questioning the theories.


In both the capability and culture approaches, identity is regarded as an objective phenomenon knowable through scientific inquiry,(although the latter approach is generally more nuanced). For instance, they claim that national identity is the characteristic collectivebehavior of the national system as a whole . . . [and] it involves national essence-the core sentiments and symbols of the state.45 ForHuntington, the identity of civilisations is defined both by common objective elements, such as language, history, religion, customs,institutions, and by the subjective self-identification of people...Civilizations are the biggest we within which we feel culturally at

home as distinguished from all other thems out there.46 Arguments such as these point to a shared epistemology among scholars ofboth schools of thought, namely, positivism. According to Jim George, positivism insists that there must be an objective reality outthere that exists independently of us and has an essential quality that we can know via rational means.47

Whether seen as a black-box (by the capability approach) or a more dynamic complex (by the culture approach), China is a realobject whose essential properties are straightforwardly amenable to analysis. This positivistic epistemology leads to dichotomousviews of the Sino-Western relations, since the commonsensical features of each form the pre-conditions of scientific enquiry, ratherthan being themselves called into question; China is totalitarian and a ruthless dictatorship; the West is democratic, and standsfor liberal democracy.48 As Benjamin Schwartz notes, despite their enormous semantic perplexities, both culture and modernityare often treated as wholes in the strongest possible ontological sense-almost as two physical objects which cannot occupy the samespace.49 Within this bi-polar framework analysts examine how Chinas view of itself will aid the outside world to anticipate Chinasactions,50 thereby allowing the West to form an accurate image of Chinas inside reality. Thus far, however, Western commonsense assumptions have generated accounts of the essential properties of Chinese identity that have proved less than satisfactory

explanations of developments in China in recent decades. When pushed on this point however, China experts invariably fall back tothe stock-in-trade oriental enigma position. Western accounts fail because China, by definition, has, ultimately, an unfathomablehistory and culture. China itself is the problem, rather than the Western theories that fail to explain it.51


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Pro- Pan K- Impact

Positivism doesnt understand China or contemporary international relations because its alwaysstructured in terms of a self-other dichotomy. We should critically reassess the framing of China.


Despite a series of attempts to make sense of China in the new international context, I argue that these approaches do notconstitute a departure from mainstream international relations theorising. By continually reducing China and internationalrelations to a set of narrowly defined questions and demarcating fixed self/Other dichotomies between the West andChina, their positivist ways of representing Chinese identity are unable to cope with the daunting task of understandingChina or the volatile post-Cold War world. What is called for is a critical reassessment of the longstanding tradition offraming and answering the identity question in the international relations discipline and in the China field in particular.

There are two reasons that make me optimistic that such a shift might be possible. Firstly the end of the Cold War hasopened up numerous possibilities for more diverse enquiries that would have been unimaginable before; secondly, thenew era of uncertainty in which we live compels us to think again: the cost of failure will be too high. China is faced withmomentous change and identity problems, but the nebulous time-space called China is not only a place where problemsold and new accumulate but also a brewing ground for alternatives.84 The creation of alternatives will not be an easytask, but I suggest that our future will depend largely on what sort of China both the Chinese and the rest of the worldconstruct in an increasingly complex two-way relationship. It is a process in which academics in the international relationscommunity will, as always, play an important part.


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Pro- Pan K- Impact

The assumption that Chinas economic rise and threat is due to the Chineseness of Chinese businesses isessentialist and conceals the complexity and fluidity of the identity of Chinese business. Chinese

businesses are part of a global production network that transnationalizes and fragments Chinas

economy.


At first glance, the logic of identifying a China threat from its rapidly expanding economic power is straightforward. In the face ofubiquitous Chinese products, job losses to Chinese businesses, as well as the growing presence of Chinese firms on the world stage, itwould be foolish, if not irresponsible, to call the China challenge otherwise. Upon a closer look, however, such a straightforwardlogic becomes more complicated as its commonsense rests on an implicit and rarely questioned assumption that takes for granted theChineseness of Chinese businesses. In other words, Chinese businesses are believed to both operate within, and are inexorably linked

to, a coherent, unproblematic actor called China. Given their distinctive Chineseness, what can be said of Chinese businesses, itseems, also can be said largely of China. Conversely, it is argued that the implications of Chinas rise can be decoded at least in partthrough a gaze at Chinese businesses and their practices.

Without doubt, China and Chinese businesses are closely interlocked; the understanding of one cannot be complete without anunderstanding of the other. Yet, to acknowledge this connection is not the same as saying that Chinese businesses are inherentlyChinese, an assumption which, in my view, tends to have rather different implications for dealing with China in the global politicaleconomy. Thus, in this paper I want to question the essentialist assumption about the identity of Chinese businesses. Instead of takingthe Chineseness of Chinese businesses and their practices as a pre-existing, unequivocal point of departure for making sense of China,I take the assumed Chineseness itself as a question by asking what is Chinese about Chinese businesses?

The aim of the paper is to shed some light on the very complexities and fluidity of the identity of Chinese businesses in thecontemporary world. By complexities, I mean primarily a duality of both contingent Chineseness and transnationality that is

characteristic of an increasing number of Chinese businesses. And by fluidity, I mean that insofar as there exist some elements ofChineseness about Chinese businesses, the meaning of that Chineseness is contested, fragmented and in flux, rather than being a fixedproperty corresponding to some immutable essence. Specifically, the paper argues that rather than simply being the commercial andeconomic arm of China, many Chinese businesses are a prime example of transnational or global interconnectedness at work, andthat their strength, identity, and characteristics need to be understood in relation to some broader, transnational dynamics in the globaleconomy today.

The paper begins with a brief survey of how the apparent strength and success of Chinese businesses has often been cast as adistinctively Chinese phenomenon that often evokes a sense of the China threat. Then, drawing on a global production networks(GPN) approach, the paper questions the assumed Chineseness of Chinese businesses by illustrating how they testify to both thetransnationalization and fragmentation of the Chinese economy in the global production networks. The transnationality of Chinesebusinesses will be underscored mainly through an examination of non-Chinese dominance in production, technology, value and profitin Chinese business sectors, especially in manufacturing. On the other hand, the fragmentation of Chinese businesses will beillustrated through an analysis of their internal diversity and lack of coherence in both Greater China and China proper. Taken

together, the attention paid to the transnationalization and fragmentation of Chinese businesses may help us better understand and dealwith the complex challenge posed by the economic dynamism in China today.


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Pro- Pan K- Impact

China economic threat arguments are homogenizing and make monolithic representations on Chinesebusinesses.


Imagined in singular, national and/or cultural terms, little wonder that the rapid development of Chinese businesses hasbeen equated with the rise of China. With the Chinese government seen as the majority owner of many firms, it seemsonly logical to raise questions about the interrelationship between Chinese business interests and [Chinas] foreign policy

objectives.16

Indeed, given the allegedly homogeneous cultural/ethnic identity embedded in Chinese businesses, theChina challenge inevitably takes on a frightening quality. To better capture the essence of the monolithic threat, variousreified imageries have flourished and pervaded the press, ranging from China, Inc. and a pirate nation through

juggernaut and locomotive to dragon and a cash-rich predator. While some may well be innocuous short-handexpressions, there is much evidence that many such framings of Chinese businesses do not bother to conceal theirovertone of looming inter-national rivalry. To quote Navarro once again, Its one thing for America to lose much of itsblue collar manufacturing base to China. If the US loses its white collar science and technology base too, it will be

Americans living the peasant life rather than the Chinese.17

Given that what is at stake here is potentially great powerconflict, it is important to take the understanding of Chinese businesses and their identity seriously.


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Pro- Pan K- Representations

There are no objective realities and representations. Representation is always inter-subjective andembedded in language, culture, institutions, and practices. China is not fixed and objectively identifiable.

Ourfirst task should be to question how the dominant representations frame China.


Positivist perspectives have been challenged by critical theorists who argue, that objective realities... are constituted byintersubjective ideas.52 What positivism fails to acknowledge is that there can be no independent meaning orcharacteristics inherent in an identity beyond particular, always socially and politically grounded interpretations of it.53As Edward Said contends,

the real issue is whether indeed there can be a true representation of anything, or whether any and all representations,

because they are representations, are embedded first in the language and then in the culture, institutions, and politicalambience of the representer. If the latter alternative is the correct one (as I believe it is),then we must be prepared toaccept the fact that a representation is eo ipso implicated, intertwined, embedded, interwoven with a great many otherthings besides the truth, which is itself a representation.54

If identity is representation, then Chinese culture or tradition can no longer be seen as something with fixed, objectivelyidentifiable meanings or properties in the positivist fashion. Instead, understanding China requires questioning how thedominant representations of China were framed in the first place.55 It is almost a truism, for example, that premodernChina was characterized by culturalism rather than nationalism. According to Townsend, however, both nationalismand culturalism carry multiple meanings and refer to complex phenomena and the culturalism to nationalism thesis ismerely a metaphor for Chinas modern transformation.56 Prasenjit Duara also states that culturalism as such is betterunderstood as a concept, or more appropriately, as a representation of Chinese culture... [and] it obviously occupies an

important role in constructing nineteenth-century China as the Other.57


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China and the West are social constructions that are fluid and relational, not objective representations.Identity is co-constituted, which means representations of China are conditioned by how the West

represents itself, and vice-versa. Problematizing the intellectual power of Orientalist representations of

China requires a simultaneous criticism of the construction of Western identity.


The representation of China is not so much a reflection of Western objective discovery of China as a product of a kindof intellectual power known as Orientalism whose essence is the ineradicable distinction between Western superiorityand Oriental inferiority.58 As a result, the way China is represented is always conditioned by the way the West isrepresenting itself and the two representations subsequently reinforce each other. This practice is particularly evident in

the discourses about Chinas tradition/modernity dilemma in which Western modernity is constructed, preferred andprivileged. Since Western identity too is a representation, it must also be problematised. There is no pre-given,monolithic, objective Western identity. The tradition/modernity framework often highlights democracy and scienceas the defining features of the Western identity and studies their impact upon China. It should not be forgotten thatWestern influences on China were multiple-Mussolinis fascism, national socialism, anarchism, socialism, andcommunism; they are all integral components of Western modernity.59As Schwartz puts it, If fascism and communismwere indeed modern phenomena, we cannot allow ourselves to be detached completely from the evils of these modernsocieties.60 If China and the West are socially constructed, and their identities constituted partly in reference (often anantagonistic reference) to each other, apparent contradictions within each entity must be treated with caution. AsRichard Madsen suggests, There is no unitary culture to be penetrated and no unitary culture to do the penetrating.61The relationship between identities should always be regarded as relational, constructed, and fluid.62 Understood in thisway, the problem of Chinese identity is not something essentially out there independent of the West; rather, the Westhas from the outset been a part and parcel of the problem.


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Representation is inevitable and unavoidable. The question of the debate is how you specifically depictChina and whether we should problematize those frames that claim to be objective, not representations

in general. Representation and language shape practice since they interconnect self and other. Framing

China as an enemy creates a self-fulfilling prophecy that Chinese enmity more likely.


Self-representation and the construction of the Other are unavoidable features of human practice. Representation per seis not the problem. What is problematic, however, is to treat representation as the objective enterprise of discoveringidentity out there, thereby ignoring the interconnectedness between representation and practice, and thus the relationshipbetween those agents who represent others and those others who are represented. In this sense, the reason why

contemporary international relations discourses about China have serious flaws is not due to the inaccuracy of theirrepresentations as such, but to their failure to understand theory as practice.63 They did not recognize their ownpresence in their representations of China.

To rethink the question of Chinese identity is to expose the particular ways certain meanings are attributed to that societyand to examine how these processes are inextricably intertwined with particular social and political practices. Whateversort of objectivity we proclaim, the ways that we represent Chinese identity are bound to have some bearing on how wedeal with China in practice, and in turn on how the Chinese identity problem will evolve. While many China specialistswould accept the notion that Chinese identity is socially constructed, they are reluctant to admit that their presentations arethemselves part of the process of identity formation. For example, if China is portrayed as a totalitarian state and a threatfor the world, as U.S. House Democratic Leader Richard A. Gephardt perceives it, then he can ask, what have we gainedby trafficking with a tyranny that debases the dignity of one-fifth of the human race? What is gained by a policy that seesall the evils and looks the other way? What is gained by constructive engagement with slave labor?64 This is often a self-

fulfilling prophecy in practice. If China scholars and policy-makers view China as essentially vile and intolerable,65 theyengage in a particular kind of interpretative practice that effectively rules out alternative strategies towards China, whichin turn makes the representation more likely to become true. Just as the construction of the Soviet threat-a primaryframe of reference for U.S. policy towards the Soviet Union emerging shortly after World War II-contributed in part to thecreation of the Cold War,66 so Ezra Vogel, one of the authors of the Pentagons East Asian Strategy Report of February1995, points out, If you treat China as an enemy, China will become an enemy.67


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Pro- Pan K- AT: Positive Representation of China

Positive representations of China are still full of ideas about how things should be done in the East. Theyalways focus on issues that effect the West like trade and security.


While many negative representations are unfair and even dangerous, some positive representations of Chinese identityalso have their problems. Many adherents of the engagement strategy, for example, assume that China, for all itsuniqueness, is not essentially different from the West, and that, with time, it will become more like us.71 Theunderlying problem here, as discussed before, is that the dominant representations of Chinese identity are largelyWestern-oriented, full of ideas about how things ought to be done in the East,72 often failing to fully appreciate Chinasinternal dynamics. Earlier scholarly work on China was structured either in terms of the Western challenge and howthis challenge had been met or in terms of the impact of modernity-Western-carried and Western defined-on Chinastraditional culture and society.73Post-ColdWarinternationalrelationsliteratureon China is preoccupied with the question ofChinas potential challenge to the West. This Western concern is largely unaware of how differently the same issues-say,Chinese nationalism-might be viewed from a Chinese perspective. As Yongnian Zheng points out, A Chinese approachto Chinas new nationalism requires discovering Chinas nationalism in China rather than in the West, and digging outChinese internal forces of nationalism rather than those perceived by many in the West.74 By focusing on suchproblems as security and trade in which the West has an immediate stake, Western international relations frequentlymarginalizes or simply ignores a host of important indigenous issues-population, environment, class, poverty, equality,and grass-roots democracy-which bear profoundly upon the lives of hundreds of millions of ordinary Chinese people. Itwill be these soft issues, I suggest, rather than top-down strategic concerns of the West, that will determine the futurecourse of China and its implications for the world in the decades to come.


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Con- Schmitt K- China

Chinese scholars are calling for Schmitts theories of the political, friends and enemies, to promote theirtransition to democracy.

Zheng, PHD Manchester School of Law; 12 (qi; telos; 160; "schmitt in china")

Besides the inspiration for the founding of a new democratic state, Schmitts political theory also concerns the protecting of thepolitical order, which helps us to construct a theoretical framework for dealing with the state of exception when the state is underthreat from its enemy. After the founding of a new political order, it is possible for it to be challenged by an enemy who has a differentpolitical agenda. It is reasonable for us to assume that, if there is a transition to a democratic system, there will be challenges fromthose who support the old political form. Schmitt pro- poses a theoretical solution to this situation.

Schmitts theoretical framework also contains his understanding of how to preserve ordinary politics. The state of exceptionpresupposes the existence of a constitutional order. Without its existence, it is meaningless to talk about an exception to the

constitutional order. And the purpose of the state of exception is to save the constitutional order whose existence is under threat. Thepolitics of founding and protecting moments and ordinary politics constitute the complete horizon of our discussion of the politics oftransition.

The theoretical model of the politics of transition that I develop from Schmitts political writings constitutes an important reason forhis reception in China. The model of Schmitts writings answers the question of how to make a political transition possible, how toprotect the new political form in the state of exception, and how to preserve ordinary politics. I do not intend to argue that all of theanswers provided by Schmitt are correct. But for those who aim to move from an authoritarian state to a democratic state, Schmittsmodel is inspiring. Among these different inspirations, the core message focuses on the role of the sovereign people in founding apolitical order, protecting it, and preserving ordinary politics.

Chinese academics are in love with Schmitt.

Lilla, Prof Humanities @ Columbia; 10 (Mark; The New Republic; Reading Strauss in China; Dec 17;http://www.tnr.com/article/magazine/79747/reading-leo-strauss-in-beijing-china-marx?page=0,0)

Students of a more conservative bent actually agree with much of the lefts critique of the new state capitalism and thesocial dislocations it has caused, though they are mainly concerned with maintaining harmony and have no fantasies(only nightmares) about China going through yet another revolutionary transformation. Their reading of history convincesthem that Chinas enduring challenges have always been to maintain territorial unity, keep social peace, and defendnational interests against other stateschallenges heightened today by global market forces and a liberal ideology thatidealizes individual rights, social pluralism, and international law. Like Schmitt, they cant make up their minds whetherliberal ideas are hopelessly nave and dont make sense of the world we live in, or whether they are changing the world inways that are detrimental to society and international order. These students are particularly interested in Schmitts

prescient postwar writings about how globalization would intensify rather than diminish international conflict (this was in1950) and how terrorism would spread as an effective response to globalization (this was in 1963). Schmittsconclusionthat, given the naturally adversarial nature of politics, we would all be better off with a system ofgeographical spheres of influence dominated by a few great powerssits particularly well with many of the youngChinese I met.


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Con- Schmitt K- China

China is an enemy of the West- they would never defend the cosmopolitan international order.

Thorup, PHD Philosophy Univ Aarhus; 06 (Mikkel; In Defense of Enmity- Critiques of Liberal Globalism)

Cosmopolitanism is complicit in the new taming of the borderland. The post-sovereignty discourse is no risk to Westernstates, who are secure in their statehood and in their sovereignty in a post-sovereign order. In this way too, one can agreewith Michael Ignatieff that, cosmopolitanism is the privilege of those who can take a secure nation state for granted(1994: 9). It may not be meant as such, but the unequal distribution of power in the international system makes the newpost-sovereign language a political tool of the powerful. The new global borderland is defined as post-political. Thepolitical is obsolete. It belongs exclusively to the nation state era. But this kind of language is systematically hiding thereturn of the political in new in/out, friend/enemy categories; the most prominent being the ones between cosmopolitan orpostmodern states on one side and a combination of modern nationalist barbarism and premodern warlord chaos on theother. The post-sovereign discourse is a moral discourse denying (certain) sovereign states their legitimacy. It becomes,therefore, a means of de-legitimization and intervention. The new moral discourse may be directed against state abuse butin a significant way it gives new life to the state in its most statist register: War. Margaret Canovan (1998) asks:Crusaders want to see human rights recognized and protected across the world, and questions of political agencyinevitable follow. Seeking to make the Marxist political project effective, Lenin hit on the notion of the powerful Party:what collective actor can (by analogy) bear the project of human rights? It is and remains the state or more precisely, aconglomerate of Western states, well later call the humanitarian sovereign. The collective actor of the world communityis the West. One cannot imagine China or Iran proclaiming to be the defender of the international community or humanityand then be recognized as such. This humanist and globalist prerogative is exclusively Western.


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Con- China

Leading China expert who compiled over 500 volumes of Chinese publications, including interviews withmembers of Chinas military, said Chin

pfdebate_criticalconstructive_february2013

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