From Going Beyond the “Nation-State” to the Construction of the “East Asia Community”? Myths About “East Asia New Regionalism”

With the deepening of globalization,geographically speaking,East Asian countries have proceeded from their respective realist positions and tried to promote the successful practice of economic cooperation between countries after the Cold War into a discussion of new regionalism in East Asia and Asia-Pacificism.Although the prototype of the“East Asia Community”led by Association of Southeast Asian Nations(ASEAN)gradually emerged,the successful practice of the East Asia Summit proved that the low-binding regional integration model led by ASEAN has a high probability of becoming a classic sample of the“East Asia Community”.It not only maintains regional stability,promotes regional cooperation,shapes regional norms,but also builds a collective identity within the region.However,in today’s world,isolationism which takes the supremacy of national interests as the supremacy has risen.It is difficult to internalize the value identity into a super-national model that breaks through the principles of realism,breakthroughs in interests,and the power framework.The thorny issues pose various challenges to the nation-states in the region trying to integrate into regional integration.The openness of East Asian regionalism has led to the persistent illness of its generalization.In the context of insufficient political mutual trust among regional countries,intensified competition among major powers,and continued weakening of ASEAN leadership,it is often prone to controversy and doubt when proposing new cooperation initiatives or ideas.The idea of the“East Asia Community”that once guided East Asian cooperation and was temporarily ignored now is still the most realistic choice.Although the theoretical construction and practical roads of East Asian regionalism are full of thorns,difficulties coexist with opportunities.With the extensive participation of countries in the region,the optimization and reconstruction of the East Asian cooperation model will be worth looking forward to.

Shi'ite Collective Identity and the Construction of the Nation-State of Lebanon

From the mid 1800s,modern Lebanon began to emerge as a state.Lebanon,as“the eternal homeland”,had been accepted by the Maronites,the Sunnis and the Druze as a general principle and the foundation of nation-state construction.The Shi'ite sectarian identity based on the leading role of the traditional feudal zu'ama was challenged by Arab nationalism in the mid 1900s,and was replaced by a new sectarian identity,based on the Shi'ite political organizations and sectarian militias.This new Lebanese Shi'ite collective identity is featured by a pro-Iranian and pro-Syrian position,and has become a big challenge to the nation-state construction of Lebanon.

Cultural Duplicity:The Social Poetic Nature of Folk Songs and Their Discourse

There is a close relationship between the folk songs and the earth bound society in China,bearing functions of load transfer,expression,dissemination of information,and beauty aspiration,etc.Folk songs are mainly presented through voice and thus possess powerful cultural duplicity,which rightly represents the social poetic quality that both the local residents and the nation-state need to take advantage of.A flexible space of co-existence is thus provided with for both of them.

Commentary and Discussion on Zhou Ping’s Chinese Nation:Integration or Pluralism?

The Chinese Nation:Integration or Pluralism by Zhou Ping is an important paper in the field of political science.The connotation of“the Chinese nation”and“the nation”has aroused heated debates among the scholars of politics and ethnology.In line with the policy of“a hundred schools of thought contend”,this paper makes targeted comments on the specific points of Zhou Ping’s paper,in particular,the connotation of“the Chinese nation”,“the integration of the Chinese nation”,“the nation”and these major issues will be discussed one by one.Finally,the author puts forward some important insights of his own.

Interrogating Naturalness of National Identity

Nation-state has been considered both an intellectual brainchild and a practical offshoot of the European Enlightenment.The liberal philosophy as an intellectual representative of the Enlightenment tradition and the modernists who emphasize modernization as the practical derivative of it not only deliberated on the simultaneousness and coexistence of the two happenings--the rise of national consciousness on the one hand and appreciation for modern values such as equality,liberty and justice on the other,many theorists argued that these modern values could be realized within a nation-state model(a modern institution).Hence,they contributed to naturalization and de-politicization of the nation-state model.Naturalization/secularization of the nation-state idea without deliberating on the possibilities of politicization and construction of national identities legitimize exclusion of people from national space,drives toward homogenization and nation-building process producing refugees and stateless people.Further,nation-states do not feel the urgency in meeting the normative demands of the international order that strive to defend human rights and address the problem of statelessness.In this context,the article seeks to interrogate the naturalness of national identity of individuals by examining the factors that tend to secularize and naturalize it and by unraveling the real socioeconomic forces that engender and shape national identity and help it look the way it does.

Geopolitics, Moral Reform, and Poetic Internationalism： Liang Qichao＇s The Future of New China

Liang Qichao＇s novel The Future of New China views culture and commerce in international contexts under the rubric of datong. While the novel begins with a scene of cultural exchange and commerce, it soon centers on the foreign education and travel of two young protagonists, who are to become the founding fathers of a constitutional nation-state. The urgency of nation building plays out in the two young men＇s over the political, moral or populist means of achieving the nation. How does nation-state building relate to the initial datong cosmopolitanism？ This paper suggests that Liang＇s nation contains international dimensions. The new Chinese nation is situated in a geopolitical network o（ nation-states, but it also aspires to self-determination and equality with other nations. The nation is to be built by resorting to a moral reform that contains the idea of tianxia （all under heaven）. In his Discourse on the New Citizen, Liang calls for personal outlooks based on culture and morality rather than institutions or actual politics. The novel analyzes China＇s debates on reform and revolution; the present paper traces the connection between this moral quality of a nation and internationalism. I contend that Liang＇s nation-building projects an international type of aspiration toward tianxia.

States,Nations,and Civilizations

Nation-states are inherently part of cultural formations,sustaining,legitimating,and inspiring them.The nations sustaining contemporary states are very different,and major routes of historical nation-state formation can be distinguished,which means that global discussions of nation-states cannot be confined to such states<lin a European sense^only.Civilization(s)is a concept with different meanings in singular and in plural,belonging to different semantic fields,at least in European languages.As a singular concept it arose in mid-eighteenth century,distinguishing a high degree of social and cultural development from“barbarism”and“savagery”.It spread rapidly across European languages in the nineteenth century with European world supremacy and evolutionism,as a European self-designation.Civilizations in plural first appeared on a large intellectual scale after World War I,the horrendous slaughters of which shattered the Western ideas of continuous evolution and progress,and of the West as the unique pinnacle of human development.In the plural,civilizations have been used in philosophies of comparative history and evolution,but it may also be used as a tool of cultural analysis.In this sense,civilizations refer to large,ancient enduring cultural configurations,to the deepest layer of contemporary cultural geology.In terms of current demographic size five major such civilizations can be identified.They impinge upon the political culture of states,upon the visions and the language of the state rulers.They do not clash,and they do not determine state behaviour.Nations and civilizations are compared as cultural entities or referents,with a view to laying a basis for analytical comparisons of nation states and civilization-states,in particular their implications of agency,time and history,including their different historical contexts of emergence.The nation and civilization designations of states also related to a wider range of contemporary state categorizations.Contemporary politics and political theorizing of civilizations are looked at in brief empirical overviews of the impact of civilizations upon international relations in the wake of Samuel Huntington’s thesis of“clashes of civilizations”,and of the promise of civilization states as a political project,and as an illuminating tool of cognition.

Comparative social rights:status and integration in the US

In this essay we develop a framework for better understanding how a focus on enhancing the social rights of immigrants and migrants can lead to greater levels of social incorporation for these groups into their destination countries and/or communities.First,we discuss how the concepts of social rights and incorporation have been used in the social sciences to understand migrants and immigrants.Second,we critically discuss models of immigrant incorporation derived from studies of the US and Europe to demonstrate the value of developing comparative frameworks across distinct countries and communities.Third,we develop and apply the categories of status and integration to discuss how social rights derived from public policy can serve to inhibit or facilitate the effective incorporation of immigrants and migrants.Fourth,we describe how subnational,state-level governments have become increasingly critical actors in affecting both status and integration in the United States.We demonstrate that social rights and incorporation cannot be understood in the US today without an appreciation for variation across distinct state governments.Lastly,we conclude with a consideration of how our analysis makes very clear that government officials are in key positions to determine the scope and depth of immigrant and migrant social rights and incorporation in ways that can simultaneously serve the long-term interests of immigrants,migrants,and the nation state as a whole.