Technology is intimately tied to culture. The new media technologies of marketing and advertising are allowing the formation of distinctly transnational middle-class and local urban identities in Chinese societies, particularly among younger generations, with long-term implications for consumerism, nationalism, national economic development, international cooperation, and conflict resolution. At the same time, new technologies of communication are breaking down geographic and institutional barriers to the collective study of Chinese culture by scholars and students. These are the conclusions of the distinguished researchers and experts who participated in the spring 2001 series of research conferences, public lectures, and website curriculum development projects organized by the Transnational China Project (TCP) of the Baker Institute. The project examines how the circulation of people, ideas, values, and technologies among Chinese societies affects contemporary Chinese culture.

Pioneering Research: The New Media of Consumerism in Chinese and Asian Societies, and Transnational Law in China

How are the technologies of consumption changing Chinese societies? To answer this question, the TCP sponsored a conference of media, marketing, and cultural studies scholars from the United States, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Australia at the Center for the Study of Globalization and Culture at Hong Kong University in March. Participants at this pioneering conference, “Advertising Culture and the Formation of Transnational and Local Identities in Asia,” concluded that advanced, more interactive advertising and survey research technologies are changing popular attitudes toward nation, locality, and economic class throughout Chinese societies. In conjunction with similar themes presented in the traditional media of civil society—literature, film, art—these new media of consumerism create powerful new images of distinctly transnational and local middle-class lifestyles. More and more consumers and citizens in these societies are being told by corporations and municipal governments to identify less with nation and more with Chinese overseas and with other residents of the great cities of Asia: Beijing, Shanghai, Taipei, and Hong Kong. These media of consumerism are likely to be especially influential with the younger generations of Chinese who are often the target of these sophisticated marketing campaigns created by transnational and local advertising firms and governments.

The conference has already produced one publication, Steven Lewis’s “What Can I Do for Shanghai? Selling Spiritual Civilization in China” in Media in China: Consumption, Content and Crisis (Stephanie Hemelryk Donald, et. al., ed., Curzon Press, 2001). Other reports and research papers from the conference will be made available on the TCP website, www.ruf.rice.edu/~tnchina. Future research on the new media of consumerism in Asian socie-ties by the TCP will draw upon the research and support of individuals from across Rice University, notably the offices of the president and the provost, School of Architecture, Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management, School of Humanities, Asian Studies Program, and Center for the Study of Cultures.

Finally, as China calls on foreigners to play a greater role in its economic development, how will it resolve disputes between foreign and domestic investors, corporations, and governments? Will it develop traditional Chinese or foreign models of domestic legal institutions, or will it utilize more “transnational” institutions for economic dispute resolution, including nongovernmental arbitration committees based in China or overseas? The TCP is working with the Baker Institute’s Energy Program and the China Institute for International Studies, Beijing’s premier foreign policy think tank, to plan research workshops on the role of transnational law in the development of China’s crucial energy infrastructure.

Curriculum Support: Web Technologies and 21st-Century Classrooms

Transnational China Project scholars are at the forefront of using Rice’s considerable resources in classroom technologies to advance the study of Chinese culture. Working with Megan Wilde and Lisa Spiro of Fondren Library’s Electronic Text Center and GIS/Data Center, TCP codirector Richard Smith has created an internet-based interactive map of the world as seen through the eyes of 18th-century Chinese cartographers. This unique map is now used as a resource in classrooms around the world and can be accessed at http://www.rice.edu/Fondren/ETC/jingban/. The TCP is also using Web technologies to create experimental “transnational classrooms.”
One project will allow students from Rice and TCP-network universities in the United States, China, Hong Kong, and Australia to form research groups to interpret and analyze the new media of consumerism in Asian societies from many different disciplinary viewpoints and cultural backgrounds. The core of this project is a Web-based archive of nearly 2,000 images of consumer advertisements collected by the TCP from subways in Beijing, Hong Kong, Kaohsiung, Seoul, Shanghai, Singapore, Taipei, and Tokyo. The TCP is working with Shisha van Horn of Rice’s Classroom and Technology Services to develop this unique archive and make it accessible to students and scholars from around the world. Finally, the TCP continues to serve as a gateway to Chinese-language Web-based resources in Asia. Professor Ping-Hui Liao of Taiwan’s National Tsinghua University has recently created a list of dozens of important Taiwanese cultural studies links for the TCP’s award-winning bilingual website.

Expert Analysis and Commentary: Financial Crisis, National Culture, the Globalization of Chinese Film

The TCP continues to draw on the expertise of scholars at Rice and its network of academic institutions around the world to explore the many factors shaping Chinese societies and the media of Chinese culture. Rice University president Malcolm Gillis, an economist recently honored by the Korean government for helping it cope with economic problems, has contributed to the TCP’s website an article exploring the origins of the East Asian financial crisis, “Financial Crisis in East Asia: Underlying and Precipitating Factors.” Gillis argues that a combination of domestic and international forces, including the use of a flawed Japanese model of finance and other long-term, underlying sociopolitical and economic factors, caused the problems that continue to plague East Asia’s fundamentally strong economies. The TCP website also contains a collection of articles from Dushu (Reader) reflecting some of the most topical debates among Mainland Chinese and foreign intellectuals on nationalism and national culture. Dushu has been China’s most prestigious and visible forum for intellectual debate, much like that of the New York Review of Books or the Times Literary Supplement. Wang Hui, editor of Dushu, selected these Chinese-language articles and introduces them. Future commentaries on the website will include the transcript of a roundtable on the globalization of Chinese film, “Contemporary Chinese Cinema in China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong: A Collective Force in the Global Market,” led by Peggy Chiao of the Taiwan Film Center and held at The University of Texas.

Public Lectures and Community Outreach: The Asian American Diaspora, Film, Dance, and U.S.–China Relations

The Transnational China Project also continues to serve as a highly visible pathway between academia and community, introducing the public to the study of Chinese culture. The TCP sponsored “Writing and Filmmaking in the Asian American Diaspora,” a roundtable discussion at the Baker Institute about identity, writing, and filmmaking in the Asian American diaspora, with Russell Leong, poet, writer, and filmmaker from UCLA; Greg Pak, independent filmmaker from New York; and Chiu-Mi Lai from the Rice Center for the Study of Languages. Participants presented their own works and discussed with the audience the many ways that poetry, literature, and film define individual and group identity in diasporic ethnic communities. The TCP also continued to sponsor the very popular “Dance Salad,” a distinctly transnational collection of dancers from Asia, the Americas, and Europe. This year’s performance at the Wortham Center in Houston featured a solo dance by Xing Liang of the Guangdong Modern Dance Company. Finally, the TCP cosponsored a lecture on U.S.–China relations with the Asia Society of Texas, “An Update: Issues Confronting the Bush Administration,” by Doug-las Paal, president of the Asia Pacific Policy Center.

Reports, transcripts, audio files, and extensive image archives from workshops and public lectures can be found on the project’s bilingual website, http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~tnchina. The website continues to receive awards and acclaim and was recently listed as an important resource in Chinese cultural studies by the Asia Society, Middle- bury College’s Center for Education Technology, and the Australian government’s Educational Network of Australia.

The Transnational China Project is generously supported by Ford Motor Co. and Price-waterhouseCoopers, and it is directed by Steven Lewis, senior researcher at the Baker Institute; Benjamin Lee, professor of anthropology; and Richard Smith, the George and Nancy Rupp Professor of Humanities and professor of history.

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