Posted on 21 September 2014
Editor’s Introduction
As part of the robust engagement of the People’s Republic of China with media and academic opinion internationally, outspoken interventions, pointed critiques as well as rambunctious declamations are increasingly common. This should be the cause of celebration: multiple voices from China on topics of moment will surely enrich our understanding of that important country and the variety of professional and public opinion.
Whereas in the academic environment a multiplicity of views and interpretations of ideas, incidents and facts is the lifeblood of intellectual life, sadly the all-too-often set pieces of party-state propaganda masquerading as authoritative media or personal opinion frequently reduce the complex, nuanced and varied views of Chinese thinkers, scholars, media workers and everyday people to a dull and belaboured monotone.
In recent years the dreaded ‘Hall of the Unified Voice’ 一言堂 of the High-Maoist Era has reappeared with baleful, and often risible, results.
When I last lectured at the TOChina Summer School in Turin in 2013, I devoted one session to the rejigged concept of The China Dream, its histories and interpretations. Mainland Chinese participants, although of varied backgrounds and very different personal opinions (in private) felt that, after one of their number requested that she be given time to make a ‘personal’ statement on the subject of The China Dream, they all had to fall in line publicly and, hands raised, chorused a series of anodyne and vacuous declarations. If nothing else, I remarked to the non-Mainland students present, they had an insight into the Communist-inculcated cultural practice of ‘performative declamation’ 表态, a form of verbal posturing, an example of ‘group think’ aimed at presenting a united front in the face of independent thinking. It’s just this kind of knee-jerk solidarity that also vouchsafes the individual against the ever-present threat of being reported to the authorities back home.
Katherine Morton is a Senior Fellow in the Department of International Relations, College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University. She is presently completing a book titled China and the Future of Global Governance in which she examines China’s role in shaping the rules of international conduct across diverse realms of global policy-making, with a particular focus on human freedoms and the global commons. —Geremie R. Barmé
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The eighth annual TOChina Summer School for China Studies hosted by the University of Turin, Italy, in partnership with the Australian Centre on China in the World (CIW) and the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was a significant occasion. The TOChina summer school was established in 2007 to advance the study of contemporary China by bringing together a plurality of perspectives from across the globe. Since then it has established an outstanding reputation, attracting some of the world’s leading experts and most promising scholars and practitioners of the next generation. A recurring theme addresses the intersection between transformations of the past and emerging trends in the future. What makes the annual Turin event unique is its creative and open spirit of debate which the organisers actively foster.
At first glance, the sub-alpine city of Turin appears to be an unlikely venue to host a China-related summer school. But looking back in time it becomes evident that the city’s historical and cultural heritage serves to enrich the intellectual agenda of the school. Parallels can be drawn between Turin’s rise to prominence as a powerful city-state in the eleventh century under the House of Savoy and the flourishing of Chinese civilisation during the Song dynasty (960–1279 CE). The Italian risorgimento – the nineteenth-century unification movement – leading to the establishment of the Italian Kingdom’s founding capital in Turin in 1861 coincided with China’s Self-Strengthening Movement 自强运动 in the late-Qing dynasty, aimed at adapting Western institutions and technologies to the broader purpose of building a modern dynasty. Moreover, the historical patterns of global commercial success in both parts of the world provide a complementary backdrop to contemporary concerns over financial crisis and economic downturn.
For a two-week period in June-July 2014, over thirty graduates and professionals from sixteen countries gathered for intensive dialogues and lectures spanning Chinese politics, economics, culture and foreign policy. The summer school agenda covered a mix of politics (including such topics as the Central Party School and the party at the grassroots), economics (state capitalism, state-owned enterprise reform) and foreign policy (Sino-Indian relations). An overarching theme connected many of the lectures culminating in a keynote speech titled ‘The Chinese Middle Class Going Global’ presented by CIW’s Luigi Tomba at the Centro Einaudi (named after the Italian politician, Luigi Einaudi, a staunch advocate of human freedoms). There was a mini-conference called ‘China Room Conversations’ on China’s presence and strategies in the Euro-Mediterranean –translated more adroitly into Chinese as South Europe, West Asia, and North Africa 南欧西亚北非. It represented a new crossroads for discussing European and Chinese strategic concerns, with Romano Prodi, a former President of the European Commission, referring to the region as a ‘sea of opportunities between Europe and China.’ More sober analysis by Chinese speakers focused on hard policy choices in zones of conflict and energy security.
