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While most ethnic Chinese in northern Thailand are Thai citizens now, their everyday lives are a site where we can witness the political power entanglement of China, Taiwan and Thailand. With this in mind, this paper aims to look into the relationship between global China and overseas Chinese from the perspective of the ethnic Chinese in the northern borderlands of Thailand. The purpose is not just to disclose the multiplicity of global China in people's everyday lives, but also to complicate the picture of overseas Chinese as portrayed in top-down grand narratives about global China. I argue that the ongoing re-Sinicization in South-East Asia and the territorial geopolitics among China, Taiwan and Thailand have opened a conceptual space for the ethnic Chinese in northern Thailand to flexibly articulate themselves within the changing geopolitical economy. I use tea production and related Chinese-language education programmes, two separate but intertwined cases, to address these issues. By looking beyond the competition, conflict and dilemmas between China and Taiwan, I argue that Taiwan's previous engagement with agricultural transfer to Thailand and the rooting of pro-Taiwan identity and discourse in language education have paradoxically paved a way for China to stretch its influence into the everyday lives of the Chinese communities in the northern Thai borderlands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of China Quarterly is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of China Quarterly is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of China Quarterly is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of China Quarterly is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The recent two-decade-long march of "global China" – manifested as outward flows of investment, loans, infrastructure, migrants, media, cultural programmes and international and civil society engagement – has left sweeping but variegated footprints in many parts of the world. From "going out," officially announced in the year 2000, to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and Made in China 2025, and from the developing world to advanced industrialized democracies, state-endorsed campaigns are but tips of a much more momentous iceberg. Numerous Chinese citizens and private corporations have also participated in a global search for employment, business, investment and educational and emigration opportunities. International reactions to the increasingly ubiquitous presence of China and the Chinese people in almost every corner of the world have evolved from a mixture of anxiety and hope to a more explicitly critical backlash. Terms such as "sharp power," "debt-trap diplomacy" and the "new Cold War" bespeak the West's dominant perception today of China as a threat to be contained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chinese state firms are expected not only to profit but also to serve state interests. But the Chinese state is fragmented: border provinces are taking on an expanded role in China's global expansion and a broad range of firm activities could be defined as patriotic contributions. Through the case of Yunnan State Farms (YSF), a province-level state-owned enterprise, this article explores how state firms interpret and navigate multiple state interests while also pursuing profit. The firm's ability to profit depends on balancing the demands and support of different Chinese state actors while depicting itself as a development partner to the Lao state and a contributor to Sino-Lao diplomatic relations and border region stability. This case thus shows that, instead of YSF's behaviour being directed by the state, the firm exercises considerable latitude in defining its contributions to state interests through the expansion of rubber production as a driver of development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coming Home to a Foreign Country: Xiamen and Returned Overseas Chinese, 1843-1938 Secondly: the migrants who "returned" to Xiamen were, nevertheless, not always "returning home", since a significant number of them were not originally from Xiamen but from its provincial, rural environs or other parts of China entirely, or else had acculturated so significantly after leaving Xiamen, sometimes over several generations, that they were effectively "coming home to a foreign country." It is on the one hand a migration history, describing the long trajectory of Hokkien migration from Amoy (Xiamen) to major settlements in South East Asia, focused on issues of "identity construction in diaspora.". [Extracted from the article]

In recent years, domestic tourism into the Xinjiang region of China has grown rapidly. Government officials view tourism as a source of both economic capital and social stability, presenting a normalcy that makes it attractive for investment. There are two paradoxes to Xinjiang tourism. According to most literature, a massive military presence should deter tourists, but numbers have continued to grow in the militarized Xinjiang region. Second, the cultural "otherness" of Xinjiang is a big draw to the region, yet this culture is being suppressed by state policies to contain Islam. Using a dataset of Han Chinese travel diaries, I look at how narrated tourist experiences of Xinjiang justify policing, how ethnic boundaries are reinforced by practices in both transportation and personal interaction, and how state policies influence Chinese travellers' views on the authenticity of their experience. While bodily assurances of security substantiate political legitimacy, tourists resist the bureaucratic management of sites, allowing for critiques focused almost exclusively on aesthetic taste. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many China watchers argue that Xi Jinping has concentrated power in his own hands in a manner unprecedented since the death of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. This article tests the extent of Xi's power consolidation by comparing the strength of his faction during his time in power to similar periods under his two immediate predecessors, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao. Furthermore, we investigate whether a dominant faction is emerging under Xi Jinping, replacing the power balancing between factions that was the norm throughout the reform era. Analysing factional affiliations of Chinese leaders in the top four ranks, we find that Xi has formed a dominant faction. Through statistical analysis of the promotion chances of provincial leaders, we find that Xi has been unusually successful when compared to previous leaders at promoting his clients. This suggests that Xi has boosted the power of his faction by elevating provincial leaders to an extent not seen since the death of Mao and Deng. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is a closely constituted party. Recent studies of the CCP describe and evaluate its formal rules, but to understand the Party as an institution we also need to understand its informal rules. The literature on "party norms", "institutionalization" and the "unwritten constitution" often fails to distinguish rules from other political phenomena. It confuses informal rules with political practices, constitutional conventions, behavioural equilibria and doctrinal discourse. It is prone to overlook important rules, and to see rules where there are none. Hence, it potentially overstates how institutionalized the CCP is, and therefore how resilient it is. The article provides a clearer account of informal rules and suggests a different explanation for the resilience of the CCP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]