Contingent States: Greater China And Transnational Relations: 22 (Borderlines) - Softcover

Callahan, William A.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0816644004 ISBN 13: 9780816644001

Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press, 2004

Synopsis

In the 1990s, Greater China became the subject of debate as the site of either the danger of the “China threat” or the promise of Confucian capitalism. William A. Callahan argues that Greater China presents challenges not only to economic and political order but also to international relations theory. In fact, Greater China, though absent from geopolitical maps and international law, is very much present in economic and cultural exchange and exemplifies the contingent state of international politics. Callahan deconstructs the mainstream geopolitical and political-economic understandings of Greater China, tracing its emergence through an ethnographic analysis of four political “problems” in East Asia: the South China Sea disputes, Sino-Korean relations, the return of Hong Kong, and cross-straits relations. Callahan shows how bureaucrats, outlaws, tycoons, academics, workers, politicians, and hooligans alike produce Greater China through networks of relations in local, national, regional, global, and transnational space. Finally, Contingent States reveals how each of the “problems” provoked theoretical innovations that depart from standard conceptions of sovereignty, democracy, and the nation-state.William A. Callahan is senior lecturer of international politics and deputy director of the Center for Contemporary Chinese Studies at the University of Durham, England, and the author of Imagining Democracy: Reading “The Events of May” in Thailand and Pollwatching, Elections, and Civil Society in Southeast Asia.

About this title

Synopsis

The concept of Greater China emerged in the Western literature to describe the economic flows between the People's Republic of China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan and in more recent years has come to signify Western fears of a rising Chinese expansionism. Callahan (international politics, U. of Durham, UK) prefers to see Greater China as "the product of a

Edition details

• Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0816644004
• ISBN 13: 9780816644001
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 334