GLOBAL CHINA AS METHOD - IN CONVERSATION WITH AUTHORS

Even after four decades of integration into the global socioeconomic system, discussions of China continue to be underpinned, bound, and framed by a core assumption—that the country represents a fundamentally different ‘other’ that somehow exists outside the ‘real’ world. Either implicitly or explicitly, China is generally depicted as something that can be understood in isolation—an external force with the potential to impact on the ‘normal’ functioning of things. This core assumption, of China as an orientalised, externalised, and separate ‘other’ ultimately produces a distorted image of both China and the world. 

Global China as Method examines five key issues that frequently arise in current discussions about China—labour rights, digital surveillance and the social credit system, the mass detention of Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, the Belt and road initiative and Chinese investment overseas, and academic free. It seeks to illuminate the ways in which the country and people form an integral part of the global capitalist system.

This webinar features a discussion with the co-authors Dr Ivan Franceschini (ANU) and Dr Nicholas Loubere (Lund)

in conversation with Professor Haiqing Yu (RMIT) about the book.

Ivan Franceschini is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Australian National University. His research focuses on labour and civil

society in China and Cambodia. He has published several books related to China, on topics ranging from human trafficking to digital activism, from labour struggles to civil society. Together with Nicholas Loubere, Ivan is the founder and co-editor of the open access quarterly Made in China Journal and the co-creator of The People's Map of Global China.

Nicholas Loubere is Senior lecturer in the Center for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University. He has expertise on microcredit and socioeconomic development in rural China. As a scholar in China studies and development studies, Nicholas has employed grounded, ethnographic, and participatory approaches in research on financial inclusion initiatives and digital financial penetration; Chinese migration to Ghana for informal, small-scale gold mining—particularly focusing on socioeconomic transformation in Ghana and China, processes and patterns of migration, and flows of resources.

Haiqing Yu is Professor of Media and Communication and Australian Research Council Future Fellow at RMIT University in Melbourne. Her research concerns the socio-political and economic impact of China’s digital media, communication and culture on China, Australia and the Asia Pacific. She is Chief Investigator of the China’s social credit system and everyday life project and founder of the Platforming China Research Network.