The December 2024 edition of LUCC's newsletter is out.

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LUCC News: December 2024

LUCC News: December 2024

It's been a huge term, with 11 events featuring 8 visiting speakers from across 3 continents. From Dr Elena Ziliotti's (Delft University of Technology) Confucian-inspired theory of Meritocratic Democracy in September, to Susanne Choi (CUHK) and Xue YE's (Alberta) memorable seminars on Migration, Masculinity and The Elderly Care Gap in Rural China, and Chinese Students' Political Participation in the Host Society, the intensive intellectual exchange, enthusiastic packed audiences, and research synergies emerging from these seminars has made the series a bright spot of the term.

We also had a terrific PhD Seminar series with Doctoral scholars from around the region, including Manchester's Chengzhi Zhang on The Descendants of Immigrants to China: Lived Experience and Identity Formation, Linchen Li (LU Law School, and a newly inaugurated LUCC Doctoral Fellow) on The Security Dilemma in International Technology Transfer: WTO Regulation and China's Legal System (4 Dec) and Yuhong Lei (Education Research) on A Discovery of Chinese Undergraduates’ Engagement on Campus (12 Dec). Credit to LUCC Doctoral Fellow Yuhong Lei for organising the series.

Next term, we're forward to new LUCC Fellow Sharon Zheng's talk on Grassroots Celebrity in the Chinese Digital Sphere as well as visits from Shaun Breslin, a doyen of UK China studies, and Daniel Bell, the famous Dean of Shandong (co-organised with LU Confucius Institute), as well as philosopher Pei Wang of HKU in March.

LUCC has also welcomed a host of new Fellows and Doctoral Fellows this term - read on to learn about their research, the latest outputs and engagements from around the community of LUCC fellows. Until next term, thanks for making the term such a great success, and wishing everyone a happy holiday season.

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Upcoming Events

Research Seminars

February 2025

Grassroots Celebrity in the Chinese Digital Sphere

Speaker: Sharon Zheng (Sociology / LUCC, Lancaster University)

Date and time: TBC

“一举两得/一石二鸟 (Two Birds with One Stone): Languages are Good for Science, Science is Good for Languages"

Speaker: Timothy Douglas (Engineering, Lancaster University)

Date and time: TBC

March 2025

The Dean of Shandong: Confessions of a Minor Bureaucrat at a Chinese University

Co-hosted with Lancaster University Confucius Institute

Speaker: Daniel A. Bell (Hong Kong University)

Date and time: TBC

Lent 2025

Navigating the Security Minefield Amid Rising Geopolitical Tensions

Interdisciplinary Roundtable

Rising geopolitical tensions are giving rise to security challenges as well as an increasingly broad scope of national security in the UK and elsewhere. Against this backdrop, this roundtable examines how researchers can proactively and responsibly ensure their work with China is secure, does not contribute to harm, and doesn’t fall foul of evolving government regulatory regimes.

Places limited, please register interest at:

china.centre@lancaster.ac.uk

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People

So far this academic year we've welcomed an amazing lineup of ten new LUCC Fellows and Doctoral Fellows. This month's newsletter will introduce the first five - read on below to learn about their diverse research interests. Next edition we'll continue and introduce Jinyuan Li, Luke Dixon, Linchen Li, Jiangye Zhu and Xiao Zhang.

For all profiles, see our People page.

Dr Baihui DUAN

Baihui is an environmental historian, focusing on the history of war, environment, climate, animals, disease, medicine, and governance in East Asia, roughly from the late sixteenth century to modern period.

Dr Timothy DOUGLAS

Dr Timothy Douglas is a Senior Lecturer in Bio-Chemical Engineering in the Engineering Department at Lancaster. Timothy studies biomaterials for biomedical applications, promotion of multilingualism in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).

Dr Sharon ZHENG

Sharon's research areas cross over popular culture (e.g. audience/ fan/ consumer/ celebrity culture), gender studies (e.g. feminism and motherhood), British/Chinese TV and media ecosystem/landscape. Sharon also has interests in media and cultural policy, social and digital media studies in China particularly.

Shu ZHANG

Shu is a PhD candidate in Law at Lancaster University, with research interests including land transaction market, rational distribution of natural resources and regulation of artificial intelligence in China. Her current research explores the role of Zeng Jian Gua Gou（增减挂钩） policy (the link between increase and decrease of land) in promoting the free flow of land in China's market and its improvement.

Hui JING

Hui Jing is a postgraduate researcher in Educational Department. Hui is interested in the Gender Dynamics and Transcultural Practice in the Development of Chinese Urban Folk Dance.

Profiles of all LUCC’s fellows are available at our People page.

New Research

Global Public Opinion on China

Andrew Chubb

As global geopolitical and ideological competition deepens, citizens' perceptions toward China are set to increasingly shape the direction of world affairs. Working in partnership with the Asia Society's Center for China Analysis, LUCC's Andrew Chubb — together with a research team of LU students — created Global Public Opinion on China (GPOC), a database that visualises nearly 2,500 survey results from over 160 countries across six continents, the largest database of its kind. The GPOC project aims to better inform debates and support China-related decision-making among the world’s governments and policy communities, including in China itself.

The interactive database is accompanied by a series of analyses essays:

• Public opinion on China in the Global South: China is not simply making inroads in Africa by cultivating elites — it is genuinely popular. But there's no neat North-South divide in views toward China.
• COVID-19's impact on China's image: the effect of the pandemic has been severe, including in parts of the Global South.
• Bringing Global public opinion on China into focus: surveys on China have been expanding, but it's essential to consider the methodological challenges of aggregating surveys on China.

Read more: https://asiasociety.org/policy-institute/global-public-opinion-china

Queer Media from the Global South: The Emerging Girls Love (GL) Media Industry of Southeast Asia

Eva Li

This article examines the recent rise of Girls Love (GL) media featuring women’s same-sex romance, produced in Thailand. While Boys Love (BL) media has gained mainstream attention since the mid-2010s, GL has received less industrial and scho larly attention. Despite Thailand’s relatively long history of pro ducing BL television series for the global audience, its first GL series, GAP (Thai: ทฤษฎสชมพู, “Pink Theory”) premiered only in 2022. The success of GAP has sparked an increase in GL produc tions and the formation of a transnational fandom largely con sisting of queer women. In 2023, two GL series aired. By August 2024, eight full-length series and two mini-series had aired and finished, with several a few more currently ongoing. Through a preliminary discourse analysis of the GL series broad cast by August 2024 and media interviews of creators, this article explores how the GL media industry charts a new path in queer media, despite its commercial underpinning and references to the production and marketing practices of BL.

Hidden in Plain Sight- Audience engagement in China’s data journalism

Sharon Zheng

With colleagues at Xiamen University, Sharon Zheng's article in Journalism explores the strategies of different Chinese news organizations’ (e.g., state-owned media, we-media, private news organizations) engagement with audiences in data journalism, aiming to attain dual legitimacy (identity legitimacy and institutional legitimacy) within the unique landscape of the digital media era in China. Utilizing the lens of organizational legitimacy, qualitative interviews were conducted with 26 Chinese data news practitioners. The findings reveal that news entities have adopted “restrictive involvement” and “substitutive involvement” strategies to limit audience engagement to superficial interactions within the consumption process of data journalism. Identity legitimacy has traditionally served as the primary incentive for news organizations to engage audiences, while institutional legitimacy has constrained the forms and degrees of audience engagement. The study posits that audience deployment by news organizations is more of a rhetorical maneuver than a practical engagement, symbolically involving audiences in China’s data news production. This research contributes an institutional perspective to the understanding of data journalism and audience engagement dynamics, shedding light on the intricate interactions between news entities, audiences, technology and the state within China’s context.

Willingness to Boycott Russian Goods in China:

How Political Ideology Shapes Consumer Preferences in an Authoritarian Context

Xue Bai

Who is likely to engage in Anti-Russian boycotts in China? LUCC Doctoral Fellow Xue Bai's co-authored article with Barbara Yoxon and Richard Turcsanyi in the Journal of Contemporary China addresses this question. While existing literature focuses on ethnocentrism and nationalism as drivers of political consumerism, this article explores political boycotts that contradict the dominant discourse of the Chinese Communist Party. Drawing on original survey data, the article uses two ideological dimensions—social authoritarianism and attitudes to economic organisation – to delineate three distinct ideological leanings in China: liberalism, the New Left and neo-authoritarianism. The article demonstrates that liberals are more likely than others to support the boycott of Russian products. Additionally, all three groups are more willing to boycott Russian goods if they hold egalitarian attitudes. The findings shed light on the causes of anti-Russian sentiment in China and its likely implications for the Russian economy.

Climate, diseases and medicine: the welfare of soldiers during the East Asian War of 1592-1598

Baihui Duan

This article examines the care provided for the welfare of soldiers by the three combatant countries - China, Korea and Japan - during the East Asian War of 1592-8. Also known as the Imjin War, this large-scale military conflict can also be understood as an encounter between different state cultures and strategies of military medicine. This study focuses on cold-induced injuries, epidemic outbreaks and external wounds suffered during the war. I illuminate provision of prophylactic measures against cold by the Ming state, as well as attempts by the Sino-Chosŏn medical alliance to manage epidemics and treat wounded soldiers. I contrast these measures with the lack of similar centralised support for the Japanese forces, and examine the effect these differences had upon on military outcomes during the war. The difference in the amount of time, efforts and resources that the three combatant states devoted to sick and injured soldiers has implications not only for our understanding of the war but also for illuminating the early modern history of military medicine in East Asia. By exploring East Asian military medicine during and after the Imjin War, this article responds to recent calls for more detailed examination of histories of military medicine in premodern periods and non-European regions.

The embodiment of Qian Zhongshu’s Guan Zhui Bian in an internet novel: Xuanxue and metaphor

Aiqing Wang

As an iconic intellectual, novelist, translator and poet in the 20^th century, 钱钟书 Qian Zhongshu (1910-1998) was not only celebrated for literary aptitude, epitomised by his chef-d’oeuvre 围城 Wei Cheng ‘Fortress Besieged’ (serialised 1946-1947), but also for his unrivalled erudition, multilingualism and critical acumen. Qian Zhongshu was versed in Chinese and Western studies, encompassing literature, philosophy, psychology, history, aesthetics, etc. Qian Zhongshu’s commendable scholarly research can be exemplified by an encyclopaedic masterpiece entitled 管锥编 Guan Zhui Bian ‘Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters’ (1979), which is constituted of a prodigious amount of reading notes and essays written in concise, recondite Classical Chinese. Notwithstanding its self-deprecating title, Guan Zhui Bian has attained critical plaudits. In a web-based time-travel novel 上品寒士 Shangpin Han Shi ‘A Top-Ranked Impoverished Scholar’ (2009-2011) composed by a writer pseudonymised as 贼道三痴 Zeidaosanchi, the author deployed elements from Guan Zhui Bian, which defies the stereotype that male-authored and male-oriented online narratives are prone to be ‘feel-good writing’ marked by 意淫 yi yin ‘lust of the mind; mental pornography’. To be more specific, the author drew on Qian Zhongshu’s elaboration of 玄学 xuanxue (Lit. ‘learning in the profound’) and analyses of metaphor.

Outreach & Engagement

Dr Tim Douglas teaches at SCUT

LUCC Fellow Dr Tim Douglas travelled to Guangzhou in July to deliver a Summer School at South China University of Technology.

Tim delivered classes on Biomedical Engineering and Biomaterials between 20 and 31 July.

Jinghan Zeng and Derek Hird speak on AI and languages in China

Jinghan Zeng and Derek Hird were invited to speak on AI in relation to IR and languages respectively at the Artificial and Information Conference 2024 held at Xidian University in Xi'an, on 26-27 October.

Andrew Chubb and Kirsten Roberts Lyer in The Conversation

Andrew Chubb and Kirsten Roberts Lyer published a piece in The Conversation, How authoritarian regimes are targeting critics abroad.

Jocelin Zhou and Derek Hird host Terracotta Army livestream

On 13 December, Jocelin Zhou and Derek Hird hosted a livestream from the Terracotta Army Museum, presented by colleagues from Xidian University's School of Foreign Languages, showcasing the historical artefacts in Pit No. 1, which was attended by an online audience of approximately 150 people. The livestream is the first in a series, which also forms part of a research project on online international education.

LUCC Doctoral Fellows bound for Rome

LUCC Doctoral Fellows Lily Wu and Hao Yang have had papers accepted for the Fifth International Doctoral Symposium on Asian and African Studies (IDSAAS V), to be held at the University of Rome Sapienza, February 20-22, 2024. Congratulations!

The East China Sea Dispute: China’s and Japan’s Assertiveness from Mao to Xi

Andrew Chubb's policy report for the Center for China Analysis uses a new dataset to detail how the East China Sea dispute began over oil and gas resources but switched toward a contest for military and administrative control as China rapidly expanded its naval and coast guard presence in the mid-2000s. Read more at: https://asiasociety.org/policy-institute/east-china-sea-dispute-chinas-and-japans-assertiveness-mao-xi

Culture & Community

Tai Chi for beginners

From 10 January to 21 March 2025, Qimei Li will teach Tai Chi for beginners at Garstang Arts Centre. Qimei is a keen amateur practitioner of Yang style Tai Chi who has practiced on and off for more than 20 years. She teaches Tai Chi in Lancaster on behalf of Lancaster University Confucius Institute. Qimei grew up in Taiyyuan, Shanxi where her father, Yuming Li, was a teacher of Tai Chi for more than 30 years, achieving Master status. Qimei enjoys practicing and teaching Tai Chi because it is a good way to improve circulation, flexibility and to let go stress.

More info: Tai Chi for beginners, Friday 10 January, 12:15pm - Lancaster University

China Study Program (CSP) Fellowships

Since 2013, the “China Study Program” (CSP), sponsored by the Center for Language Education and Cooperation(CLEC), has supported more than 1000 international students in areas of humanities and social sciences with their doctoral studies and research in China. As the Secretariat of the Expert Committee of the China Studies Program based at Renmin University of China, we are writing to introduce the fellowship program to you. We would be grateful if you circulate the letter or encourage students to apply.

CSP provides individualized training programs for each candidate and offers generous fellowships to cover the tuition fee and living expenses in China. By offering opportunities for collaboration with prestigious professors in 18 key universities in China, this program brings in-depth learning and research opportunities. Ph.D. candidates registered in an overseas university are eligible to apply for a “Joint Research Ph.D. Fellowship," and those who have obtained a master's degree and are interested in pursuing a Ph.D. degree in China may apply for the “Ph.D. Program in China."

The application for the 2025-2026 CSP Fellowship is now open and will remain open until Feb 28, 2025. Please visit this website for detailed information: http://www.chinese.cn/page/#/pcpage/csp