EACS-2016. Book of Abstracts

Politics & International Relations 21st Biennial Conference of the European Association for Chinese Studies 160 on in-depth interviews with local officials and civil society actors and analysis of official documents. The project questions the image of politics in China as monolithic and aims to offer important insights into the variance of political realities that local politicians and local civil society are facing in different parts of China. Bendarzsevszkij Anton (PAGEO—Pallas Athene Geopolitical Institute) From Plans to Realization: Chinese and Russian Projects in the Russian Far East Key words: China, Russia, Russian Far East, geopolitics, investments, Since the beginning of 2000s China has become an increasingly important actor in the Russian Far East: several infrastructural projects and big investments started towards Russia and on the border region of the two countries. However China mostly consider Russia as a country with huge, vacant agricultural areas and an attractive source of raw materials — an absolute periphery. On the other hand, all these projects remain strictly one-sided: despite the solemn statements from Russian officials, the Russian projects in the Far East were not completed, and were mostly limited to the building of gas- and oil pipelines toward China. Big investment projects on the border region include the Bolshoy Ussuriysky island or the Fuyuan region. The island was partly handed over to China in 2004 with big projects planned on the territories from both sides, however China was the only one who has fulfilled these projects. Huge territories are involved: Russian Far East consists of over 6 million km2s and inhabited by only 6 million people — attractive territory for Chinese economic investments. While the military aggression is not threatening Russia from the Chinese side, they are losing this region economically: Russian Far East is becoming much more connected to China economically, than to the far away situated Moscow. It does not leave much choice for Russia: because of the events in Ukraine, in the last two years Russia was excluded from international arena and had to cut all of its connections to the West, therefore it needs China more than ever. Burcu Oana (University of Nottingham) Portrayals and Expressions of Contemporary Anti-Japanese Nationalism Key words: nationalism, China, Diaoyu/Senkaku islands, sovereignty, collective memory This paper is concerned with identifying the contemporary nature of anti-Japanese nationalism in China and the way in which these expressions of nationalism are constructed and managed. The main case study on which it draws refers to the 2010 and 2012 protests surrounding the contested Diaoyu/Senkaku islands.Drawing upon instrumentalist and ethno-symbolist theories of nationalism from the wider litera- ture, the anti-Japanese nationalism in China is understood as an interactive process composed of both bottom-up and top-down perspectives. Therefore, the approach taken in this analysis is also two folded. In order to understand the top-down perspective, discourse analysis largely applied on People's daily, the mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which is complemented by state actors' official statements. The bottom-up perspective relies largely on interviews conducted with scholars and activist, as well as on secondary sources. First, by unpacking the discursive official rhetoric, it is revealed that the Chinese Government consciously constructed a “one-dimensional” nationalism. Several linguistic and content strategies were used to construct and disseminate this controlled nationalism, among which are constant repetitions of themes of “sovereignty”, “historical memory” and “mistrust”, antithetic por- trayals of China and Japan, and the purposeful omission of information related to historical facts and contemporary protests. Second, when bottom-up perspectives are pitted against top-down perspectives, similar features are identified which shows a common, unified understanding of nationalism in relation to Japan. However, interestingly, broader discussions on the meaning of nationalism reveal a pluralised aspect of nationalism; this was expressed through pledges of loyalty to the nation and along blood line- age, rather than pledges to the Party-state.The paper concludes with an evaluation of the risks that an inflamed anti-Japanese nationalism poses to policy.