Download the pdf file of this announcement.*  

*About Peter Kwong
pkwong(at)hunter.cuny.edu  

Peter Kwong (Ph.D. Columbia University) is Professor of Asian American Studies and Urban Affairs and Planning at Hunter College, as well as Professor of Sociology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is known for his work on Chinese Americans and on modern Chinese politics. Peter sits on the Board of Directors of several organizations: Downtown Community TV; Manhattan Neighborhood Network; International Center for Migration, Ethnicity and Citizenship; and The New Press, and is a member of the Board of Trustees of New York Foundation. He is the recipient of a CINE Golden Eagle Award for co-producing a PBS program on immigration, and a Presidential Award for Excellence in Scholarship from Hunter College.
 
His latest books are Chinese America: The Untold Story of America's Oldest New Community and Chinese Americans: An Immigrant Experience, co-authored with his wife, Chinese historian Dusanka Miscevic. His other books include Forbidden Workers: Chinese Illegal Immigrants and American Labor, The New Chinatown, and Chinatown, New York: Labor and Politics 1930-1950. Kwong is a regular contributor to The Nation.

**The China Lecture Series is part of Focus on the Global South’s Deconstructing Discourse and Activist Retooling Programme (DDARP), a project that aims to revisit debates on contemporary development issues, ideologies and paradigms and introduce new frontiers in analyses and perspectives to contribute to knowledge production, critical discourse and political action.  The DDARP features programmatic short-term courses (lecture series) and one-time public lectures/roundtable discussions by nationally and internationally acclaimed scholars that are leading experts in their respective fields. For more info or to access past lectures, please visit  www.focusweb.org/philippines.

LECTURE 1

CHINA’S “PEACEFUL RISE” FOREIGN POLICY:
IMPACT AND LIMITATIONS

7 July 2009, 2:30 to 4:00
Third World Studies Center, Lower Ground Floor,
Palma Hall, UP Diliman

Chinese leaders realizing the historical problems associated with rising powers initiated “peaceful rise” foreign policy. It is to reassure the United States and the rest of the world that the rise of China will not pose a threat to them, and that they will, in fact, benefit from her economic expansion.

China has begun to play a constructive role in international and regional institutions to support economic cooperation and political stability. She has also restored relationships with a host of countries by putting aside thorny problems that had previously impeded their trade and flow of investment.

However, China’s arrangements to secure sources of energy and raw material with various governments for her ever growing economy have led to charges that she practices colonial-era unequal exchange – cheap manufacturing goods for raw material.  Also, to assure a stable environment for trade, China is accused of building spheres of influence, often by supporting and making alliances with governments, some of whom have dubious political legitimacy.

In establishing these spheres of influence, China has come into regular conflicts with the United States—the declining, but still the sole super-power power in the world. Besides, Chinese freedom of action is also constrained by her symbiotic economic relationship with the United States. It often has to operate under institutions set up that favor American interests.

In the end, while reemerging on the world stage, China is narrowly focused on national interests, with little attempt to challenge the neo-liberal and neo-colonial global order into a system that would be equitable to the poor, developing and non-align world, which years ago, China claimed to be a member of.

Finally, even with the economic ascendancy, Chinese consciousness is infused with the sense of a two centuries long humiliation at the hands of the west. Regular chauvinistic and nationalistic public outbursts threaten to undermine China’s attempt to project her “soft power.”
 


LECTURE 2

IMPACT OF CHINA’S RISE ON GLOBAL LABOR STANDARDS

8 July 2009, 2:30 to 4:00
AVR Rm. 207
Palma Hall, UP Diliman

China’s recent spectacular expansion is predicated on the low cost of labor, made possible especially by the huge surplus of rural population that is steadily coming to the urban areas in search of work. The collapse of Chinese rural economy has already compelled 250 million farmers to migrate, and millions more every year are expected to keep packing into the labor market.

Once in the labor force, these workers enjoy neither benefits nor social-welfare protection of any sort. In fact many of them do not even have “legal” residential status to live in the cities. Existing labor laws are regularly ignored by local authorities in the favor of the employers. Most of all, labor organizing is forbidden and organizers are regularly beaten, harassed and imprisoned.

The government prefers this state of affairs, for improvement of labor conditions would only undermine Chinese low-wage advantages internationally, and erect obstacles to creating work for millions of rural migrants rushing to the cities for low-paying factory jobs. Meanwhile, dozens of Chinese interior regions are trying to out-bid each other for foreign investment by offering even lower wages.

China’s primitive labor structure has greatly enhanced the power of global capital and placed serious downward pressure on global labor demands.  However, as China becomes more and more industrialized and its workers therefore more proletarinized, they will inevitably form an effective movement in opposition to the employers, foreign investors and Chinese authorities. As the largest working class in the world, they will be the vanguard of international labor movements.  

Readings:

“The Chinese Face of Neo-liberalism,” by Peter Kwong in CounterPunch,  October 7/8, 2006

“China's recipe for economic success includes slave labor,” by Peter Kwong in Philadelphia Inquirer, July 3, 2007

“Politics and poverty make People's Republic an unlikely source of economic salvation,” by Peter Kwong, in Toronto Star, May 04, 2009  

LECTURE 3

CHINESE ARE EVERYWHERE!

9 July 2009, 4:00 to 5:30
AVR Rm. 207
Palma Hall, UP Diliman

Chinese emigration has surged to produce the largest single emigrant group in the world: over 62 million by the latest estimates have spread to 150 countries around the world. The overseas Chinese population has doubled, and then doubled again during the last two decades. The Chinese emigrants today come from diverse parts of China and represent a wide range of professions.

Still the most notable are Chinese emigrants of humble background, who are searching for low-wage jobs and establishing small businesses all around the world.  Their number has been increasing further with the helped of Chinese government labor export programs

Not surprisingly, the increased presence of Chinese around the world has created anti-Chinese backlashes in the receiving countries.  Typically, the Chinese are accused of undermining domestic labor standards and cultural values. Most often, the Chinese used by the employers in the host country to undermine the indigenous labor movement.

The last anti-Chinese hysteria swept through the world during the upsurge in Chinese immigration to the New World in the 19th century. Recruited by greedy employers to work as cheap laborers, the Chinese faced resentment from earlier settlers and suffered racial attacks. Today’s simmering conflicts in many more parts of the world, mixed in with the widespread resentment against Chinese imports and the lingering Cold War-era fear of China, could easily ignite even worse reactions.

Chinese government, however, remains indifferent to this ominous prospect. It has no incentive to temper with the exodus of its citizens, which is helping it solve domestic unemployment. It also benefits from the remittances the émigrés send home—some 20 billion U.S. dollars a year. At the same time, Chinese immigration has become an easy issue for politicians in host countries, who are interested in exploiting anti-immigrant sentiment to generate populist support at home.

Readings:

“Chinese Migration Goes Global,” by Peter Kwong in YaleGlobal, 17 July 2007

LECTURE 4

CHINA’S ONE-PARTY RULE AND GLOBAL IMPLICATIONS

 10 July 2009, 2:30 to 4:00
AVR Rm. 207
Palma Hall, UP Diliman

One-party rule is the founding principle of socialist systems intended to guarantee the “dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e. the working class.

Yet, at present, Chinese Communist party maintains one-party system even though the country is no longer socialist.  In fact, the Tiananmen Massacre in 1989 was the party’s attempt to ward-off challenge to its monopolistic hold on the country. During the last two decades the party has enacted no political reforms. The problems of corruption and abuses of the one-party rule go on unimpeded.  The result is the mushrooming of political unrests. Workers go on strikes because the government sides with exploitative owners, peasants riot to protest land encroachment by politically connected developers. Independent businessmen are unhappy because they cannot compete fairly against the monopoly of officials.  And as China’s economy grew during the past twenty years, so did people’s consciousness of their rights. They are outraged by the lack of legal protection against tyrannical government decisions. Yet the party remains solely focused on maintaining “stability,” so as to hold onto its political power. It is fearful that any relaxation would lead to the dissolution of communist order, just as Gorbachev’s perestroika had done to the Soviet Union.

China’s repressive system is rigid but brittle, because it lacks a fail-safe system to ward off serious popular challenges. Ironically, claiming still to be socialist, Chinese government is using the harshest methods to suppress labor organizing. It is the responsibility of labor, overseas Chinese and international human rights communities to put pressure on the government to allow the Chinese people to speak out and to force the government into political reforms.

This section will be accompanied by the viewing and discussion of a HBO documentary “China’s Unnatural Disaster,” that I co-produced last year.
Readings:

“When Rulers Are Not Virtuous, Sparks Fly,” by Peter Kwong in International Herald Tribune, April 4, 2007

“Silencing the Messenger,” by Peter Kwong in The New York Times, May 12, 2009

 

OTHER EVENTS

A LECTURE ON ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES IN THE UNITED STATES

7 July 2009, 5:30 to7:00
Bulwagang Salaam, Romulo Hall, UP-Asian Center
Hosted by the U.P. Asian Center, in cooperation with Focus on the Global South

CHINA’S “PEACEFUL RISE” FOREIGN POLICY: IMPACT AND LIMITATIONS

14 July 2009, 2:00 to 5:00
Focus on the Global South office, UP Village
Hosted by the Development Roundtable Series Thematic Working Groups
on Foreign Policy and Trade and Industrial Policy

15 July 2009
Xavier University, Cagayan De Oro City
Hosted by Focus on the Global South and Xavier University

*Please set your printer to economy mode when printing this document.

The Deconstructing Discourse and Activist Retooling Programme (DDARP) is a project that aims to revisit debates on contemporary development issues, ideologies and paradigms and introduce new frontiers in analyses and perspectives to contribute to knowledge production, critical discourse and political action.  The DDARP features programmatic short-term courses  (lecture series) and one-time public lectures/roundtable discussions by nationally and internationally acclaimed scholars that are leading experts in their respective fields.

The DDARP courses/lectures are designed to be broad based, cross-cultural, and interdisciplinary.   Visiting lecturers come from a wide range of disciplines and traditions in the social sciences, and with varying experience and background as public scholars.  The main audiences are students and the youth; the lectures are also intended to appeal to the academe, media, government officials and activists who are at the forefront of today’s political debates.

With Dr. Jim Glassman, Associate Professor, Department of Geography, University of British Columbia

1 to 4 July 2008, Palma Hall, University of the Philippines - Diliman

Sponsored by Focus on the Global South, Third World Studies Center, the University of the Philippines - Political Science Department, and the Philippine Political Science Association

 

 

More Photos

 
Urban social movements are often associated with what are considered “progressive” causes, and most activists involved in such movements are inclined to describe themselves in such terms. The Thai coup of September 2006, and the ongoing street demonstrations of the People’s Alliance for Democracy in 2008, pose problems for any such easy identification. Though executed by the military, on behalf of royalist interests, the coup was supported by an array of primarily Bangkok-based and middle class groups, many of them associated with organizations such as NGOs and state enterprise unions, and such groups have again been at the center of the 2008 demonstrations. Although some of these groups claim anti-neoliberal political orientations, their support for the coup, and now for the ouster of the government elected in 2007, effectively places them on the side of forces opposed to populist spending policies and in favor of specific forms of neo-liberalism—at least for Thai villagers. This lecture explores this development by focusing on the Bangkok/up-country and urban/rural divisions in Thai politics—which, though socially constructed, have taken on political substance, in part because of their grounding in regionally differentiated class structures.

Reading list:

Thongchai Winichakul, 2008. Toppling Democracy.  Journal of Contemporary Asia 38, 1 (February): 11-37.
Pasuk Phongpaichit and Chris Baker, 2008. “Thaksin's Populism,” Journal of Contemporary Asia 38, 1 (February): 62-83.
Ukrist Pathmanand, 2008. “A Different Coup d'État?,” Journal of Contemporary Asia 38, 1 (February): 124-142.
Michael K. Connors, 2008. “Article of Faith: The Failure of Royal Liberalism in Thailand,” Journal of Contemporary Asia 38, 1 (February): 143-165.
Porphant Ouyyanont, 2008.  “The Crown Property Bureau in Thailand and the Crisis of 1997,” Journal of Contemporary Asia 38, 1 (February): 166-189.
 

 
After September 11, 2001, the administration of George W. Bush showed renewed interest in Southeast Asia, putatively because of the presence within the region of “terrorists” connected to the attacks on the US. However, as during the Cold War period, US interests in Southeast Asia are shaped heavily by US interests in Northeast Asia—especially Japan and China. US interests are also conflicted, involving different political blocs, with different interests and ideologies, grounded in different specific class groupings. These blocs, sometimes called “neo-liberal” and “neo-conservative,” have agendas that overlap but also contain significant tensions. Those tensions shape not only US policies towards Northeast Asia, but Southeast Asia as well, with varied consequences throughout the latter region. I explore and analyze some of the tensions in US policies with the help of ideas from Nicos Poulantzas, whose conception of the state as part of the social division of labor can be expanded to help specify relations between US neo-liberals and neo-conservatives, as well as to indicate the reasons for limited changes in US policies over time, in spite of the tensions.

Reading list:

Jim Glassman, 2005. “The ‘War on Terrorism’ Comes to Southeast Asia,” Journal of Contemporary Asia 35, 1 (February): 3-28.

Jim Glassman, 2005. “The New Imperialism?  On Continuity and Change in US Foreign Policy,” Environment and Planning A 37, 9 (September): 1527-1544.

 
The Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS)—a project of transborder economic integration between Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, and Yunnan province (China), funded by the Asian Development Bank (ADB)—has been portrayed by the ADB as reflecting the natural geographic expansion of market processes after the end of the Cold War and the re-orientation of Communist Party regimes. I argue that a better interpretation of the development of the GMS is that it reflects a power-laden struggle by different investors and states to procure a “spatial fix” for problems of overaccumulation. Among other things, this means (1) that the GMS is not a “natural” market area but is socially produced as a space of investment by various political economic processes, (2) that large-scale capitalist forces from both inside and outside the GMS are central to its production and do less to integrate it internally than to selectively integrate key sites within the GMS into a broader East Asia regional economy of which they are a part; and (3) that the entire process is marked by conspicuous forms of socio-spatial uneven development, rather than by the equal opportunity for betterment sometimes suggested in neo-classical and neo-liberal literature on the GMS.

Reading list:

Jim Glassman, 2007. “The GMS and Thailand’s ‘Spatial Fix’”, presented at the international conference on Critical Transitions in the Mekong Region, Chiang Mai, Thailand, January 30.

Medhi Krongkaew, 2004. “The Development of the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS): Real Promise or False Hope?,” Journal of Asian Economics 15, 5 (2004): 977-998. 
 

 
The recent explosion of studies by economists on global measures of poverty and income distribution has received somewhat less attention from non-economists and social activists than it should. There are various problems with measures of either poverty or inequality, but there are also tentative conclusions that can be drawn from the empirical evidence regarding both long-term and short-term trends. Interpretation of the evidence, however, also depends upon the goals and assumptions of the interpreters. In this talk I argue that for groups involved in social movements favoring redistribution of wealth and income, the implications are important and point to the necessity of shifting strategies in response to shifting geographies of global inequality.

Robert Hunter Wade, 2004. “Is Globalization Reducing Poverty and Inequality?” World Development 32, 4 (2004): 567-589.

ABOUT JIM GLASSMAN

Jim Glassman is Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of British Columbia. He received his PhD in Geography from the University of Minnesota in 1999. His main research interests include political economy of development in Southeast Asia; regionalization in the Greater Mekong sub-region; geo-politics and social conflict in East and Southeast Asia.  He has written on topics ranging from Thai democracy and politics to globalization and US foreign policy in the region. He is the author of Thailand at the Margins (Oxford, 2004), a study of uneven development and the transformation of labor processes in Thailand since the Second World War. His current research is on socio-spatial uneven development in the Greater Mekong Sub region.