Editorial

No. 52 — 2021
A Chinese centre of the world? Jing Jin Ji and the remaking of Beijing

The China of Xi Jing Ping is on course to become the first economic power of the world, overtaking the US around 2040 according to their own previsions. In parallel, Chinese leadership is massively investing in the upgrading and development of its army and fosters its political influence all over the globe, mostly through investments and political pressure. In many public occasions, Chinese leaders have expressed the view that the balance of power and influence was coming back to normal. The old state of China had been the most developed part of the world including many technical advances and sophisticated…
No. 52 — 2021
Global China from a Gender Lens

In the context of globalization and China “rising”, the past two decades witnessed the increasing research interest on the emerging field of “Global China”. Global China studies is an interdisciplinary research field that studies China’s multifaceted global engagements and impacts. It expands China Studies beyond China’s territorial boundaries and looks into the role of China in the global stage, its profound influence on global governance, trade, aid, investment, financing for development, technology, militarization and peace, environment, geopolitics, human rights, etc. The considerable amount of studies, initiatives and media coverages focus on the monitoring of China’s global footprint, overseas investment—especially the…
No. 52 — 2021
China’s Multilateral Diplomacy

Multilateralism, according to one of the most frequently quoted definitions, is “an institutional form which coordinates relations among three or more states on the basis of ‘generalized’ principles of conduct” . International organizations (IO), the major institutional form of multilateralism, are an instrument to tackle challenges that transcend national borders. How China utilizes these instruments is an intrinsic part of China’s overall foreign policy and features China’s multilateral diplomacy. This paper traces China’s multilateral diplomacy, which has been shaped by its relations with the West and has evolved with China’s own policy adjustments. A Bumpy Road to International Organizations Giving…
No. 52 — 2021
From workers to capitalists in less than two generations: Chinese urban elite transformation between 1988 and 2013

This article was originally published on October 9, 2019 at voxeu.org website. The historically unprecedented economic and social transformation in China over the past four decades has seen urban areas becoming much richer, but also much more unequal. This column analyses changes in the Chinese urban elite. It finds that, compared to the 1980s, the elite today consists mainly of professionals, self-employed, and smaller and larger business people, they are much better educated, and they receive a much greater share of total urban income. This is reflected also in the composition of the Communist Party of China. The transformation of…
No. 52 — 2021
‘Els xinesos a Catalunya’ (2001) revisited

Els xinesos a Catalunya (The Chinese in Catalonia) , was published in 2001. It was the first piece of research to take an in-depth look at the population, especially given the need to further knowledge on how to incorporate it into the educational system. The pioneering work commissioned by the Jaume Bofill Foundation provides us with a helpful starting point for analysing the characteristics of their presence twenty years on. In 2020, 65,048 Chinese nationals were living in Catalonia, making them the fourth-largest group of foreign residents, after Moroccans, Romanians and Italians. Like the rest of Spain, Catalonia has become…
No. 52 — 2021
China’s Environmental and Climate Change Policies

Melanin in milk powder, cadmium in rice, malachite in seafood, lead in tea, carbamate in ginger, antibiotics in chicken meat, exploding water melons and cooking oil “recycled” from sewage – those are just some of numerous food scandals leaked out in recent years in China. They highlight various contaminations of water, air and soil equally as the weak points of political regulation. For many years, China has become a permanent feature on international debates on environmental and climate protection. The rapid economic development caused massive deterioration of the environmental conditions and because of high emissions China is considered to be…
No. 54 — 2021
Stick your masculinity up your ass

In recent years a series of discourses and reflections about masculinity have emerged. Historically, masculinity has been valued, something positive, something associated with power and above all associated with men. Feminism may have been the first movement to criticise the values associated with masculinity as patriarchal, oppressive and violent values, values that also limited men’s options to one type of behaviour, a stereotyped, controlled gender role. This feminist critique opened the door to questioning masculinity as a positive value in itself, even opening up the question of what exactly masculinity was. In this respect, one of the most interesting shifts…
No. 54 — 2021
Rethinking masculinity to transform society

After centuries of struggle, the successive waves that have arisen since the late 19th century and the cultural change that has come about in recent years, the feminist movement has managed to place its demands at the centre of social and political debate in the liberal democracies. Critical analysis of patriarchy and the incorporation of a gender perspective in the different fields of the social sciences have established a theoretical basis to assess the structural inequalities between men and women and define and develop political tools to remedy them. Despite the enormous challenges of the discrimination that exists and the…
No. 54 — 2021
Masculinities, Imagination and Cultural Practices

In recent decades, masculinity has moved into the centre of debate, thrust into the spotlight by critiques of normative masculinity launched by feminist movements, civil rights movements and postcolonial movements across the world. At the same time, part of the far right has seized the banner of masculinity to defend a particular social order from attack by all these movements in general and by feminist movements in particular. The debate about what to do with masculinity in such a disputed context has been met with very different approaches. At times there has been talk of abolishing masculinity entirely—a posture driven…
No. 54 — 2021
Masculinity isn’t just a men’s thing

Masculinity is a historical phenomenon. What we define as masculine or otherwise is a changing, unstable and plural social construct. Like any historical event, it is complex and involves the whole of society. Masculinity is a social value that is not only to do with men. Those brought up as men experience it at first hand, intimately, of course, but they are not the only ones who participate in it or define what is virile. Contemporary masculinity began to take shape in the early 19th century. As Xavier Andreu has explained , during the liberal revolutions a new model of…
No. 54 — 2021
The negotiation of masculinity in Nordic education

For much of the 20th century, the Nordic countries led the way in the policies of the welfare state and of educational reform. After the Second World War the governments of Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland and Finland opted for a shared educational reform in response to the wars they had suffered and to foster social inclusion. The aim was to educate in democratic values to contribute gradually to the construction of a new society in which governments pursued interventionist policies to create centralised educational structures to ensure inclusion of pupils and avoid situations of discrimination and social exclusion. In short,…
No. 52 — 2021
Studying China

As a consequence of China’s rising power and its growing presence on the European and Spanish agenda, its consideration as an object of study by think tanks and/or research centres has experienced a relative boom in recent decades. Although with ups and downs and perhaps at a slower pace than desired, if we follow the evolution of this particular aspect over the past 40-50 years, we could say that a general change in trend is perceptible: from studies centred on traditional fields such as language, literature, art, philosophy or history, a leap has been made to the social sciences in…
No. 52 — 2021
China in books: major publications in the modern period

The publications on China that flooded Europe in the modern period offered a fairly complete image of the country, which in turn was complemented by the objects that arrived from the Far East, including porcelain, paintings, musical instruments, silk and Chinese books. It is precisely on the books written about China by Spanish authors that this paper will focus, providing an overview of the main works published on the subject in Spanish in recent history. China in the 16th century The first major work on China in the modern period, and undoubtedly one of the most relevant contributions to the…
No. 52 — 2021
China’s ambition for a globally oriented university

The firm bid to the promotion of universities and research has been one of the unchanged constants of Chinese leadership over the past four decades. At all times it has been a process with strong state investment and with central planning guidelines and very ambitious strategies, drawn up and implemented over a long timescale. The initial bid to the reconstruction and expansion of the university system (1977-1995) When Deng Xiaoping came to power after the death of Mao Zedong (1976) and the defeat of the Gang of Four, he did so by promoting the principle of “seeking truth through facts”…
No. 52 — 2021
China and the conflicts in the Middle East

The interest of the People’s Republic of China in the Middle East and North Africa appears to be on the rise over the past decade. The data are revealing. Since the announcement in 2013 of China’s flagship overseas cooperation and investment programme, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) –also known as the Silk Road Initiative– economic relations between China and the Middle East have been going from strength to strength. China is already the largest trading partner of up to ten Arab countries and Iran, increasing trade with the region as a whole fivefold between 2004 and 2017 (exceeding USD…
No. 52 — 2021
China’s role in the construction of a new geopolitics in Asia and the world

Knowing and understanding the point of view of the People’s Republic of China in its own terms does not mean endorsing, condoning or justifying that point of view. I do not advocate China’s authoritarian technocracy as a substitute for representative democracy. I also do not defend representative liberal democracy as the definitive model when this term “liberal” defends the interests of a miniscule minority at the expense of an immense majority. I think both models are in crisis. What is happening in Hong Kong today could be a major symptom of the difficulty of merging the two models. Changing paradigms…
No. 52 — 2021
The Domestic Constraints of China’s Global Leadership Ambition

In this short essay, Baogang He explains why and how Chinese domestic politics, in particular its socialist identities, have constrained its global leadership ambition. Western concerns about Beijing’s global leadership ambition have been highly exaggerated, overlooking the fact that China has poor and inadequate intellectual infrastructure that impedes its leadership capacity. Indeed, it might be said that China’s global leadership project has about as much substance as a bubble, bursting the moment when its leadership ambition encounters problems at an operational or interpersonal level. The Rise of China’s Global Leadership? During the early years of the twenty-first century, discussion of…
No. 52 — 2021
China – still a fragile superpower in search of its mission

“There lies a sleeping giant. Let him sleep! For when he wakes, he will shake the world.” This quote, attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte, captures that China is being seen as a potential great power for centuries. In recent decades, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has gained influence. Militarily, the United States (US) is still far more powerful than China, but the PRC is catching up and has developed into the most capable Asian country. The military expenditure of the US might still be more than double that of China. 20 years ago, however, the ratio was 5:1 . Economically,…
Governing complexity: an essay on democracies in exceptional times

We live in a time of maximum complexity. From a sociological perspective, history is presented as a constant evolution of the degree of complexity that mediates human relations. New technologies, migrations, and pandemics, among many others, are elements that have habitually complicated our relationships and forced governments to evolve in responding to them. But what response? A democratic community must be precisely a space to deliberate on how to adapt to complexity, a space in which to debate on the measures that need to be put into place to respond to it. However, as the pandemic has shown, this space…
The 2030 Agenda with a gender perspective

In 2015, at a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly, its leader proclaimed, “we have reached a decisive moment for humanity”. The words were spoken by Ban Ki-Moon, on the day the 2030 Agenda was approved. It opened a new path, a path of hope, because it encouraged member states to abandon old development policies and build a more transformative agenda for the world. For many of us, it was a tentative hope, in the full knowledge that the declarations made in that old 1st Avenue building in New York could prove to be a shooting star or a…
No. 49 — 2020
The World’s Sustainable Development Goals Aren’t Sustainable

In 2015, the world’s governments signed on to the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with a commitment to bring the global economy back into balance with the living world. Now, five years later, as the U.N. General Assembly convenes online to discuss the global ecological crisis, everyone wants to know how countries are performing. To answer this question, delegates and policymakers have referred to a metric called the SDG Index, which was developed by Jeffrey Sachs “to assess where each country stands with regard to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.” The metric tells a very clear story. Sweden, Denmark, Finland,…
No. 49 — 2020
Culture in the 2030 Agenda

In 2005, 56 countries from all over the world convened by UNESCO agreed to recognise that the diversity of cultural expression that characterises our society is what defines an ecosystem of humanity that is clearly dependent on the natural ecosystems with which we interrelate. This was the Convention for the Promotion and Protection of the Diversity of Cultural Expression (UNESCO 2005). In 2018, 146 countries from all over the world plus the European Union already formed a part of this framework of international consensus. The link between culture and nature had been a cause for concern ever since the first…
No. 49 — 2020
It is now more urgent than ever before to ensure we leave no-one behind

The social cost of Covid-19 is high—very high indeed. This is so much the case that we are not even capable of imagining the real extent of the worldwide social crisis that is only just starting to take its toll. The pandemic has shown to what extent in just twelve months the poverty, inequalities and social exclusion that already existed have been hugely aggravated. There are more persons at risk of falling into poverty, and the persons who were already living in poverty are today poorer than before . This is true both here in Catalonia and in any other…
No. 52 — 2021
China Before a World in Crisis

At the end of the 1970s, China was a scarcely industrialised country devastated by the Cultural Revolution, whose contribution to world GDP was less than 2%. In 1979, under the firm and skilful leadership of Deng Xiaoping, a process of reform began that allowed the country to open up and liberalise its economy, while at the same time consolidating the power of the Chinese Communist Party after the death of Mao Zedong – a process of internal transformation that involved leaving behind a centralised and planned economy to become a market economy that opened up to the world. At the…
No. 52 — 2021
Understanding China in a context of transition

The growing influence of the People’s Republic of China has been the subject of heated debate in academic and policy circles over the past three decades. Very often, this debate has been framed in antagonistic terms, pitting those who view this process with optimism and hope that it may lead to greater multipolarity against those who see in its accumulation of power not only a threat to the privileged position of some Western countries, but also an enormous danger to the international order as we know it. In such a polarized scenario in which strong pressures for change are involved,…
No. 52 — 2021
Is China an aid superpower?

China’s rapid rise as an aid donor in the past two decades is one of the most dramatic changes in the global development aid architecture. Today, the influence of China’s aid has been witnessed in many underdeveloped countries across Asia, Africa, and Latin America. There is little doubt that China’s aid has become indispensable in helping the world eradicate poverty and deal with challenges that all humankind faces, such as global warming and infectious diseases. China’s booming aid investment and its aid concepts and approaches that are different from traditional donors have triggered heated discussions. It seems that China is…
No. 52 — 2021
Old roads, new horizons: China and the Belt and Road Initiative

If there is one phenomenon that has drawn the attention of academics, analysts and specialised media so far this century, it has surely been the rise of China and its potential to transform the world as we know it. Nobody can deny that there is no shortage of arguments to describe the unstoppable rise of the Asian country as the process with the greatest capacity to transform the contemporary world. On the basis of a dynamic economy that is clearly on the rise and of greater political and diplomatic assertiveness, China is now a leading player on the international stage,…
No. 52 — 2021
China’s response to the crisis of the international liberal order

For at least two decades, much of the academic literature in International Relations has been devoted to a detailed analysis of developments in the dynamics of structural change and power transition. Today, no one doubts China’s emergence as a major power. It is an established fact. Undoubtedly, the resilience demonstrated by the Asian giant in the face of the international financial crisis, first, and the COVID-19 health crisis, later, has convinced both enthusiasts and sceptics. This indisputable reality has been the fundamental driver –albeit not the only one– behind more diffuse and gradual alterations in what we have come to…
No. 52 — 2021
China, a global energy powerhouse

China’s new central position in the power structure of the international system and its increasingly assertive actions –a reflection of its greater self-confidence in global affairs– keeps its political and economic rivals on the watch for any moves that might alter the strategic competition being waged in different arenas and areas of international relations. Their caution turns into suspicion whenever China’s actions affect the US, its main strategic competitor. China, an energy powerhouse, a leader in renewable energies The energy sphere is no exception to this rule. Since 2009, China has been the world’s largest energy consumer, which has had…
No. 52 — 2021
Normative powers in flux: how the rise of China changed Europe

The rise of China since 1978 has not only changed the global power balance as measurable in economic and security terms, but also in terms of its ability to define what is normal in the global political economy. In other words, to grasp the role of Global China today it is insufficient to only provide data on its economic growth, investment abroad, or the build-up of its military, illustrating the narrowing gap between Beijing and the West. The way China “extends the universe of what is thinkable, sayable and accepted as legitimate” on the world stage , thereby effectively pluralizing…