Chinese state media Facebook ads are linked to changes in news coverage of China worldwide

We studied the relationship between Facebook advertisements from Chinese state media on the global media environment by examining the link between advertisements and online news coverage of China by other countries. We found that countries that see a large increase in views of Facebook advertisement from Chinese state media also see news coverage of China become more positive. News coverage also becomes more likely to use keywords that suggest a point of view favorable to China. One possible explanation is that by drawing greater attention to the issues emphasized by Chinese state media, the advertisements help Chinese state media set the news agenda covered by other media sources.

Following the state-owned enterprises: Chinese expatriate construction workers in Zambia

Chinese expatriate workers in Africa remain an under-researched and poorly understood group despite their large numbers. Based on data collected through interviews and participant observations during 2013 and 2014 among Chinese expatriate construction workers employed by a large-scale Chinese state-owned construction enterprise in Zambia, this article offers an analysis of their migration experience as it relates to the context of China’s growing economic involvement with Africa. This paper further argues that Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in Africa function as transnational social organizations to promote Chinese expatriate workers’ migration to Africa and provide them social support and care when they experienced difficulties during their sojourn. In this way, the patron–client relationship was formed between Chinese SOEs and Chinese expatriate workers, paralleling the existing employment relationship.

‘Winning the Peace’: The Chinese Maritime Customs Service, foreign technocrats, and planning the rehabilitation of post-war China, 1943–1945

Through the lens of the multinational staff of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service (CMCS), this article argues that a technocratic programme of reconstruction evolved in the Nationalist government's wartime efforts on post-war planning, which refashioned a cadre of foreign (semi-)colonial-era experts into technocrats serving a sovereign state. This episode, in which the weakened Customs Service reclaimed its significance for the Chinese state, occurred in China's wartime capital, Chongqing. After the abrogation of the so-called ‘unequal treaties’ with foreign powers in January 1943, China entered a post-treaty era, and the question of retaining long-serving foreign Customs Service employees perplexed Nationalist leaders. Eventually, China's huge post-war need for foreign expertise, networks, and imports led to a moderate staff reorganization of the CMCS, with foreign technocrats being kept on and other bureaucrats either shifted to advisory positions or being forced to retire. Technical expertise provided a new guise for the European and American presence in post-imperialist China. Taking the rehabilitation of coastal lighthouses as an example, this article demonstrates the significance of foreign technocrats to the Chinese state during the last phase of the Sino-Japanese War and in its immediate aftermath. In showing the ambition and preparations of the Nationalist government for a post-war era, this article corrects a narrative of an all-out collapse of the Nationalist government from the mid-1940s. The wartime evolution of the Customs Service further highlights the growing importance of technocrats in the decolonizing world.

Fir and Empire: The Transformation of Forests in Early Modern China, Reviewed by Peter C. Perdue

Ian M. Miller's important book follows the impact of the Chinese state and economy on the forests of southern China, from the eleventh through sixteenth centuries. Besides providing a new narrative of forest history, based on the scouring of official sources, his helpful comparisons to Europe and Japan ask us to rethink how we periodize Chinese history and evaluate the success of the imperial state.

Prospects for cybersecurity to end-2022

Subject Prospects for cybersecurity in 2022. Significance The COVID-19 pandemic has intensified multiple cybersecurity issues that are likely to be salient in 2022 and beyond. Organisations face increased pressure to provide security for remote workers, prevent phishing and ransomware attacks, and deploy new technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) systems safely. Meanwhile, geopolitical tensions in cyberspace have also intensified, particularly since the damaging cyberattacks against prominent US targets by Russian and Chinese state actors and criminal hackers.

International NGOs as intermediaries in China's ‘going out’ strategy

China's ascendancy as a global development actor has significant implications for geostrategic dynamics and international development. While the push to ‘go out’ has been seen as a major strategy of the Chinese state, the actors are increasingly diversifying, including Chinese state agencies, businesses and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). We analyse the inconspicuous but important involvement of international NGOs (INGOs) in China's globalizing strategy. Drawing on in-depth interviews, we develop an integrated framework for INGOs as intermediaries in China's ‘going out’ strategy, based on the content of intermediary support (tangible vs intangible resources) and the function of the intermediary (bridging vs initiating). These intermediary roles have implications for how INGOs navigate conflicts between their domestic work in China and their outbound efforts, INGO legitimacy as actors that promote global norms or as ambassadors of the party-state, and the extent to which they facilitate Chinese expansion and soft power or shape China's global engagement. We show how INGOs as northern actors continue to play a role in South–South Cooperation. Our findings shed light on how global civil society chooses to invest its significant material and discursive resources, and how global actors under authoritarianism internalize, resist or promote its projects.