Australian perspectives on contemporary China

Universities in Australia have been important centres of China studies or studies on the Asia-Pacific region, more generally, for a very long time. The Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra is one of the most famous among them.

Its different colleges, institutes and centres where comprehensive research related to Chinese history, society, economic structures, literature, philosophy, languages or other fields of interest is conducted are highly acclaimed institutions of higher learning that attract some of the brightest national & international students and scholars (for a short history of relations between China and ANU, see the amazing video below).

Last month, a dedicated team of editors, translators and writers around renowned China scholar Geremie R. Barmé has finished the work for a new edition of 'The China Story Yearbook'.

The 2014 edition of this incredible source of information on all things Chinese is entitled 'Shared Destiny' and consists of six chapters in total.

Written by some of the most distinguished China writers, specialists and scholars in their respective fields of study or expertise, such as Geremie Barmé himself (Introduction and Conclusion), Jane Golley (Chapter 1), Jeremy Goldkorn (Chapter 3), Gloria Davies (Chapter 4) or Carolyn Cartier (Chapter 5), to name just a few, the new book is a must-read (and I don't write such things lightly) for anybody interested in the current state of the PR China and the country's position in the world.

In addition to longer chapters by the main contributors directly attached to the authoritative 'Australian Centre on China in the World (CIW)' at ANU, interspersed so-called 'Forum' sections allow some room for short discussions by additional Australia-based and / or international China specialists on topics as diverse as political morality tales, new economic trends, the state of contemporary international relations and the role of the PR China, relations across the Taiwan Strait, the state of the arts and the growing weight of Chinese cultural politics, mobility and migration in an age of globalization or justice and the law.

The various authors have refreshingly different backgrounds, ranging from historians, literary scholars, former diplomats, new media entrepreneurs and consultants to specialists in China-related studies in political economy or foreign policy, internet studies, CCP doctrines, justice and security agendas or urban studies, migration and mobility.

Each chapter is followed by the 'Forum' section in which the respective writers shortly introduce important topics of discussion.

A chronology of key events, the list of contributors, links to additional online material and a so-called 'List of Information Windows' make this extremely valuable ebook even more useful.

Screenshot The China Story Project - Yearbook 2014: Shared Destiny

Thankfully - considering the astronomic prices some commercial academic presses aka online service providers nowadays charge, 'The China Story Yearbook', published once a year since 2012, is part of a wider open source project created by the widely respected ANU Centre.

Do not hesitate and download the book / individual chapters for free or order it as an on demand print volume if you are more into the paper stuff. (Note: In case you missed them, Yearbooks 2012 and 2013 are still available here and here.)

Oh, and not to forget: Professor Barmé is, among many other things (China historian, editor, translator, founding director of the CIW), also the China scholar who has coined the term 'New Sinology (后汉学 / 後漢學)' in 2005 as a novel approach to Chinese studies. In his own words, New Sinology is about:

'A robust engagement with contemporary China and indeed with the Sinophone world in all of its complexity, be it local, regional or global. 

It affirms a conversation and intermingling that also emphasizes strong scholastic underpinnings in both the classical and modern Chinese language and studies, at the same time as encouraging an ecumenical attitude in relation to a rich variety of approaches and disciplines, whether they be mainly empirical or more theoretically inflected. 

In seeking to emphasize innovation within Sinology by recourse to the word ‘new’, it is nonetheless evident that I continue to affirm the distinctiveness of Sinology as a mode of intellectual inquiry.'

(from Geremie R. Barmé 2005, On New Sinology.)

(You can read the complete article here if you want.)

The myth of China's 'ghost cities' reconsidered

Construction activities somewhere in the vast plains of Inner Mongolia (2013) :: 

© Robert James Hughes / Flickr / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

When I was roaming the web for some original new info about China's unprecedented urbanization drive a while ago, I eventually tripped over a really fascinating academic paper by three Chinese scientists via Motherboard (one of the countless ventures of the Vice Media empire).

The writer of the short piece, entitled 'Meet the Data Scientist Revealing How Big China's "Ghost Cities" Really are', spoke to one of the authors of the recently published study that takes a refreshing novel approach to re-evaluate the long-standing myth of giant new urban agglomerations constructed in a frenzy only to stay largely vacant.

These enormous nearly uninhabited Chinese 'Disney Worlds' or 'ghost cities', as they are commonly called, always seemed to epitomize what's seriously wrong with much of the country's often megalomaniac urban planning projects.

Most prominent among these newly constructed metropolises is one of the main population hubs in Inner Mongolia, the notorious city of Ordos, a location that made headlines in English-language media as early as 2009. A monstrous new development zone, even in the Chinese context, so-called Kangbashi New Area, had been devised and built outside the old city centre of Ordos to accommodate over a million future inhabitants.

The only problem:

The expected masses didn't move in and the small percentage of around 20,000 people (in 2013) who did so were eager to leave again. The futuristic urban planning scheme morphed into a virtually deserted ghost town with half-built or abandoned apartment buildings, empty streets and a plush new airport without any passengers to speak of (for a two-year old reportage about Ordos and Kangbashi, see here; according to more recent accounts, things are beginning to change lately - see below).

For many outside observers, Ordos became the prime example of immense, hastily constructed but largely empty Chinese ghost cities that didn't turn out as wished by overambitious urban planners. For quite some time, the feverish construction of ever-bigger and extravagant urban clusters has been described as utter failure by foreign and, to a lesser extent, Chinese commentators.

But in the last few years, writers and academics have begun to question the conventional wisdom that ghost cities will never turn into glitzy new boomtowns and thrive as economic and cultural hot spots.

A brand-new study by a team of scientists from Baidu Research's Big Data Lab (one of several research facilities of the search engine giant that is co-located in Silicon Valley and Beijing) and Peking University's Institute of Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems in Beijing now sheds new light on the long-standing myth of frantically developed but deserted ghost cities all over China.

The three authors Chi Guanghua, Liu Yu and Wu Haishan acknowledge that their findings are only a first step in using big data to better grasp the actual state of proclaimed ghost cities. Nevertheless, the scientists used an impressive amount of location data from Baidu Maps to analyze China's 'lost cities' in some depth.

Screenshot bdl.baidu.com/ghostcity/

The abstract of their preliminary study reads:

'Real estate projects are developed excessively in China in this decade. Many new housing districts are built, but they far exceed the actual demand in some cities. These cities with a high housing vacancy rate are called "ghost cities". 

The real situation of vacant housing areas in China has not been studied in previous research. This study, using Baidu positioning data presents the spatial distribution of the vacant housing areas in China and classifies cities with a large vacant housing area as cities or tourism sites. 

To understand the human dynamic in "ghost cities", we select one city and one tourism sites as cases to analyze the features of human dynamics. This study illustrates the capability of big data in sensing our cities objectively and comprehensively.' 

(Chi et al., 12 Nov 2015, arXiv:1510.08505v2 [cs.SI])

In their paper, the authors freely admit that their data corpus is biased (the smartphone users that are covered belong to a certain demographic group that might not be completely representative, for instance). In addition, the concentration on just two case studies and types of cities, Kangbashi New District in Inner Mongolia and the tourist city of Rushan in Shandong province, do not allow sweeping generalizations.

Nevertheless, they might be able to assess the current state of ghost towns more accurately than previous studies. One very interesting finding is that many parts of Kangbashi actually did get well populated over time. Tourist magnet Rushan, on the other hand, apparently still stands largely empty out of season.

The (not peer-reviewed) study concludes:

'For the first time, we use Baidu big data to analyze the real situation of "ghost cities" in China. The features of national spatial scale, long temporal scale, and high precision of Baidu big data make the study of "ghost cities" representative and reliable. 

Instead of just counting the number of homes with light at night in certain residential areas as the indicator of "ghost city", Baidu big data can count the population precisely, in real time, and in national scale. A limitation of the data is that it cannot represent the real demography of a city because not all people are Baidu users. 

However, with the ubiquity of smart mobile phones, Baidu users occupy the most proportion of the whole population. Moreover, the quality of residential area POIs will affect our results. We make a series of processing to make sure that the POIs are reliable. Baidu big data bring opportunities to objectively understand the status or even reasons of "ghost cities." 

Based on the Baidu positioning data and residential area POI data, we design an algorithm to discover the vacant housing areas. 

The results discovered the specific location of vacant housing areas, which can help government make smarter and more reasonable decisions. Our results provide the real situation of the so called "ghost cities" in China. 

Cities with a large vacant housing area are mostly second-tier and third-tier cities. East provinces have more proportion of cities with vacant housing areas. 

We also distinguish the tourism sites and cities. Based on Baidu positioning data, we discover the human dynamic in cities with a large vacant housing area to help better understand the situation in "ghost cities."' 

(Chi et al., 12 Nov 2015, arXiv:1510.08505v2 [cs.SI])

If you want to immerse yourselves some more into research methodology, the two sets of data used, the case studies or some figures, feel free to download the full paper 'Ghost Cities Analysis Based on Positioning Data in China' by Chi et al. (don't worry, only 14 pages!) that is available at arXiv.org right here.

By the way, twenty case studies of actual or proclaimed ghost cities in different parts of the country are presented on the very nice interactive web site of Baidu's Big Data Lab. You also can switch between map and satellite views (in Chinese, see here).

And in case you want to learn more about the intriguing phenomenon of Chinese ghost cities and the myths surrounding it - albeit in a less scientific way - try the new book 'Ghost Cities of China' (Zed Books / Amazon) by travel writer Wade Shepard or visit his extensive blog Vagabond Journey.

Unconventional journeys into the past :: Urbexing in China

Abandoned ceramics factory :: © Shannon O'Toole / Flickr / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

I love to stumble upon information that leads directly to fascinating glimpses into whole new or - as in this case - rather old and nearly vanished worlds.

Last week, The Guardian had a very interesting piece, entitled 'Crouching trekker, hidden buildings: China's urban explorers', that was written by Beijing correspondent Tom Phillips. The article introduces two China-based representatives of the global community of so-called 'urban explorers' or 'urbexers' in short.

This tightly-knit and ever-growing group of like-minded souls is made up of true enthusiasts who wander around their respective urban environments tirelessly, tracking down largely forgotten corners, exploring the outskirts of cities or even travel to far-away foreign countries.

Equipped with cameras / smartphones and practical stuff (think gloves, torches, first aid kits or cigarettes to appease security guards), they search for thrilling hidden locations, such as derelict structures and interiors of deserted homes, apartment buildings, hospitals, mental institutions, schools, industrial sites, amusement parks or 'ghost houses' with their often shabby, agonizing or just plain creepy inventories.

True urbexers are really passionate about these relics of the recent or not so recent past as they can tell compelling stories if you look close enough.

One of the guys portrayed in the article is a Briton who currently works in the Chinese capital and is apparently one of the busiest and best-known members of China's urban explorers' network of around 200 people in total.

Brendan Connal, that's his name, is also the mastermind behind the amazing blog Burbex where he regularly posts marvellous pictures of Beijing's (and other Chinese cities') lost places. Over the years, he has discovered lots of slowly disintegrating, godforsaken spots and has painstakingly documented the dystopia and decay or, more specifically, the various disturbing consequences of frenzied mega-urbanization and ever-faster cycles of industrialization and de-industrialization.

The second urbexer interviewed by Phillips is the professional Chinese photographer Zhao Yang (赵阳) aka WhiteZ (怀特贼) who started his personal urban exploration project in 2006 and is stationed in Beijing as well.

In the course of action, Zhao Yang has set up an excellent (Chinese-language) site, named Cooling Plan (冷却计划), where he presents several samples of his ongoing photo project from different locations, such as the once famous Shougang iron and steel industrial area on the western fringes of the Chinese capital, for instance, as well as some short videos recently filmed on the scenes he visited.

It shouldn't come as a surprise that venturing forth into the unknown of China's urban 'wilderness' brings along certain health hazards and other less tangible dangers. Non-compliant guards, high fences, aggressive dogs, the imminent perils of natural habitats or the dire condition of buildings and sites can pose a lot of challenges.

But experienced urbexers are not so easily deterred; many begin to thrive when access is extremely difficult while the expected spoils seem especially rewarding.

Interestingly, the former recreational activity of urbexing has become serious business lately as tourists around the world are increasingly attracted to these unconventional journeys into the past and are thus willing to pay big bucks for the services of seasoned urban explorers.

(PS: If you ever thought about urbexing in the German capital, the surroundings or hinterlands, have a look first at the well-respected English-language site Abandoned Berlin. And no, this part of my post is not a promotional gig as I don't know the Irishman behind it personally - I just admire his work and general attitude.)