Mainstream media faces challenges in developed democracies like never before. On one hand, seemingly “free” digital (including social media) options are eroding the market for print drastically. Ads are not so much shifting from print to digital, but apparently simply disappearing. In the face of the pressures stemming from changing economics of the news business—which still has to be gathered at great expense, even if it can be distributed or shared by third parties practically for free (denying the gatherers their share of revenue)—one now encounters a new form of threat that is more political and cultural, namely, “fake news” and state and nonstate actors who wield it to undermine the public's trust in traditional media or news sources.

The full-scale Protestant missionary assault made possible by the provisions of the Treaty of Tientsin, which allowed missionaries access to all parts of the interior of China and provided them with the protection of local authorities, both created new problems and intensified old ones existing as a result of unwelcome foreign presence in the land. The difficulties were of such nature as to plague even those nations which had considerable experience and had enjoyed substantial success in colonial affairs. It is the purpose of this paper to examine one incident involving missionary operation in order to illustrate through it the practical burdens which such enterprises could impose upon British and Chinese diplomacy. It is the conviction of this writer that such episodes, although not in themselves crucial, were influential in the shaping of diplomacy.

It is not customary to associate Japan with the Crimean War yet there is a very real connection. When the Russo-Turkish conflict expanded into a general European struggle it made out of the North Pacific and the seas around Japan a new arena of friction. Until March of 1854 the fighting had been confined to the Black Sea and the Near East, but with the entrance of Great Britain and France into the war on the side of Turkey the Asiatic colonies and commercial settlements of Russia were brought within the scope of hostilities. Europe, however, continued to remain the major sphere of battle, which fact tended to eclipse the significance of events that were taking place in and around Japan. Historical treatment of the period of the Crimean War has naturally dealt with these more important phases, ignoring almost entirely the Far East.

On the muggy afternoon of July 5, 1962, an unusual symposium of some 270 scholars and students of Chinese studies from all over the country gathered in Tokyo. They were drawn by the urgent need to discuss the problems raised by the Toyo Bunko's (Oriental Library) receipt of grants from the Ford and Asia Foundations for organizing the Center for Modern Chinese Studies. The vital issue was whether it was permissible to let the Toyo Bunko accept the huge amount of American funds to organize modern Chinese studies in Japan.

The Chinese literary renaissance has produced in the past few decades many distinctly new results. The universal acceptance of the vernacular as a literary medium by a whole generation of writers, the absorption of modern western ideas, and the transvaluation of all traditional values brought about radical changes in creative literature. New theories were studied and practised, new forms and genres developed, and an appreciable number of distinguished works of poetry, fiction and essays created during this period can be assured of a permanent place in the history of Chinese literature. Yet one ancient literary genre, biography, seems to have benefited little by the new movement. It is this fact that makes the excellent work now under review deserve more than usual attention.

Party governments in Japan during the period from 1924 to 1932 joined a majority of the European democracies in imposing rigid state controls over the new medium of radio. Over the years many elected governments have restricted political expression over radio despite the strong logical connection between free elections and free speech, and this article examines the Japanese case in a comparative perspective. It analyzes the decision-making process that produced Nihon Hōsō Kyōkai (NHK), the public-interest radio monopoly, in Japan in 1926, as well as the exercise of state controls over broadcasting until the last prewar party cabinet fell in 1932. Various definitions of the public interest that are consistent with democratic values may nonetheless call for close state supervision of broadcasting. In Japan, the rationale for the control of radio resembled the rationales of many contemporary democracies. The Japanese experience suggests that, although broadcasting controls may not have contradicted democratic principles, the development of a strong democratic regime would have been better served by a liberal policy toward the new electronic medium.

This article examines the subject of queues in the life and writings of Lu Xun (1881–1936), the most prominent figure in modern Chinese literature. The long-standing reluctance of readers and critics to associate this backward hairstyle with Lu Xun's iconic figure has restricted our understanding of the topic to two well-known satirical portraits in his short fiction, Ah Q and Sevenpounder. This article, however, proposes that the queue is of more than satiric interest—that the author's own experience raises fundamental questions about how he discloses and transmutes certain experiences in his writings. Starting from some little-studied events featuring queues in his pre-Republican years and a puzzling short story that recounts them, this essay analyzes the queue's autobiographical connections and their varied literary manifestations. It also makes a case for reexamining the uses of autobiography for a writer whose life story is an important part of his influence.

What these four quite different books broadly share is a focus on the role of the state in Myanmar society. Current scholarship describes the authoritarian state in Myanmar, which has been controlled by the army since 1962, as either dominantly present or neglectfully absent. Censorship and the repression of autonomous spaces in society, on the one hand, and the failure of the state to enforce efficient health and environmental policies, on the other, are keywords in these works that illustrate the double-faced appearance of the state's existence and role in society.

This article examines how Chinese national values are imparted to and through the recent phenomenon of ceremonial volunteers or etiquette volunteers (liyi zhiyuan). These volunteers are all young college women who serve at major national events by greeting guests, ushering, and holding ceremonial ribbons. They are supposed to embody Confucian ritual values and the practices of propriety that define China as a nation of civilization through their roles as ceremonial hostesses. This feminine symbol of national tradition and cultural virtues is realized through a heavy emphasis on discipline, physical training, compliance to authority, and collectivism expressed through the ways the performances are staged and mass mediated. This article argues that the ceremonial volunteer represents a new state effort to engineer a model woman citizen by combining the Confucian discourse on etiquette, the communist party-state discourse on militarization and strong womanhood, the communist sport tradition of body training, and the latest initiatives on volunteering. The result is the making of gendered national subjects, marking new values of class, femininity, and nationalism. This article contributes to the understanding of emergent values about gender, class, volunteering, and the important roles they play in the process of citizen making in today's China.

Taking the Yokohama Chinese community as an exemplary case, this article delves into linkages between Chinese diasporic identities and collaborationism during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–45). Using published memoirs, Japanese government and police records, and local newspapers, it examines the wartime experiences of a community struggling to maintain both its Chinese identity and its position in local society. Japanese authorities did not categorically assimilate, intern, or deport this population. Instead, they enforced displays of support for collaborationist regimes in occupied China in order to manufacture what they termed “Sino-Japanese amity.” Public expressions by the Yokohama Chinese contributed to this narrative, but these Chinese were not merely puppets. They actively negotiated the meanings and practices of collaborationism to fulfill local needs. By examining their engagement with Chinese and Japanese national imperatives, this article reflects on the nature of Sino-Japanese friendship, hidden resistance, and local integration.

The military victories of the Northern Expedition (1926–28) ended nearly two decades of political fragmentation and ushered in a new era of centralized government in China. A key concern of the Nationalist government, based in Nanjing, was bringing the haphazard array of private schools that had emerged since the republic's founding in 1911 in line with the Nationalists’ political agenda. The Nationalist leadership also hoped to use their educational reforms to bring the frontier regions, many of which were only tenuously allied with Nanjing, more formally under their control. Thus, the new regime set out to achieve the twin goals of regulating private schools and cultivating ties among the frontier region's population. These two goals became entangled in an unexpected manner at the private Muslim Chengda Teachers School. Although the Nationalists banned private teachers schools in 1933, they deliberately exempted Chengda from such regulations to further their frontier agenda. Later, when the central government's frontier political calculations changed, the Nationalists rescinded such protection and forced Chengda to abide by the original regulations.

One of the most important problems which independent Burma faces is how to establish a basis for constructive cooperation between politics and religion in meeting the needs of the new state. The youthful political leaders; who dominated the immediate post-war period, were for the most part, disdainful of religion, and enamoured of Socialist or Communist ideas. They were acutely conscious of their country's relative backwardness in terms of education, health, and economic development, and wanted to move forward rapidly with their modernizing program and social reforms. They were by the same token impatient of popular apathy and resistance, which were strongly reinforced by religious traditionalism. The viewpoint of the influential Buddhist monastic community (Sangha) was poles removed from that of the sophisticated radicals. The traditionalist lore of the Buddhist teachers (Sayadaws) was pre-scientific, obscurantist in terms of modern learning, and unrelated to technological needs. The Sangha, furthermore, at the end of the war, was itself rent by factionalism and demoralized by its heavy involvement over the preceding quarter of a century in political matters which were not properly the concern of the monks.

During the years 1895 to 1898 the Chinese reform movement was a remarkable success and then a conclusive failure in Hunan. For the first time, ideas emanating from the intellectual ferment in the treaty ports were actively implemented in the conservative provinces. Members of the Hunanese elite joined with government officials in a broad program of modernization. But in late 1897 and early 1898, as foreign powers pressed for concessions in China, a new leadership gradually took control of the Hunan reforms. Led by Liang Chʻi-chʻao, this group was intensely influenced by the teachings of Kʻang Yu-wei. By March it had broadened the scope of institutional change and had widely popularized Kʻang's ideas. Members of the elite, who at first had supported reform, became alarmed as the movement became more radical. They disagreed sharply with the Kʻang Yu-wei group over reform objectives, and after a bitter controversy during the spring of 1898, they suppressed Kʻang's teachings and ostracized his followers. By the summer of 1898 they had reasserted their domination over provincial affairs.

This year academic circles in the Netherlands are celebrating the centennial of the birth of C. Snouck Hurgronje; Arabist, scholar of Indonesian affairs, and formateur of Dutch colonial policy. Most Dutch scholars and many students of Indonesian affairs would readily agree that few men have had as intimate acquaintance with the Indonesian archipelago and its people and have had as wide a reputation as an expert on this part of the world as the late Snouck Hurgronje. Unfortunately his writings and policies are known to English-reading scholars only at second hand. Except for a few brief articles, only his books, Mekka and The Achehnese, and his lectures in Mohammedanism have appeared in English. Other important writings have appeared in German and French, but the great bulk are in Dutch. There are presently plans to translate some parts of Snouck Hurgronje's collected works and also to make available certain writings which were done after the collected works were published, but the publication plans for these translations and reprints are still indefinite.