Journal of Asian Pacific Communication - Volume 12, Issue 2, 2002

The study examines gender differences in communicative strategies of Mandarin-speaking children in Beijing, China. Five-year-olds’ naturalistic discourse shows that both girls and boys can be bossy and demanding on the one hand, and submissive and tolerant for impositions and chastisement on the other, depending on contexts. Girls are impositive and chastising in the social/moral domain, where boys are most tolerant of and submissive to imposition. In contrast, boys are most impositive and chastising in the technical/problem-solving domain, where girls are most tolerant of imposition and admissive of inferiority. These gender differences make mixed-sex group interactions appear smooth and uneventful, and make same-sex group interactions appear competitive and problematic. These results call for a theoretical shift from an Essentialist universal perspective to a more culturally-sensitive, local and contextualized approach in research on gender and language communication, short of falling into a completely relativist Postmodern approach.

In post-Handover Hong Kong, one sees an influx of cultural products from mainland China, from increased radio and television programming in Mandarin to the adoption of simplified Chinese characters in some publication venues. These are symbols of the ‘resinicization’ of Hong Kong. Meanwhile, Beijingers proudly assert that the Chinese capital is the cultural centre of China, and they look with a combination of curiosity and disdain on the popular culture of Hong Kong. With this steady influx into Hong Kong of culture emanating from the Chinese capital, and with the imperialistic attitude of Beijing elites, one might conclude that Cantonese popular culture is in serious decline. However, this is not the case. Through a descriptive study of Cantonese popular music — or Cantopop, as it is known in the West — this article argues that Cantonese culture is a unique and irrepressible cultural force in Greater China. Further, this article argues — and this is the main point — that Cantopop has served the role of a strategic cultural form to delineate a local Hong Kong identity, vis-à-vis the old British colonial and mainland Chinese identities. The article includes a brief history of Cantopop.

This article examines and rejects the perspective that Confucianism was compatible with a notion of rights. In contrast to the established doctrine of human rights which conceives human beings as moral equals, Confucianism was grounded in a philosophy and practice of moral inequality which measured human morality in relation to each person’s position in the familial and social hierarchy. The roots of the Confucian antipathy towards human rights stemmed from the overriding significance attached to the attainment of social harmony since it was this that justified the apparent need for a hierarchical and therefore unequal society. This propensity towards harmony and hierarchy also ran counter to the notion that individuals possessed rights per se. With each person in the hierarchy expected to perform an onerous array of duties, there was little, if any, room for the pursuit of independent or separate interests. Consequently, any understanding that individuals were endowed with “rights” was stifled from the outset.

As relation between China and the West changed precipitately in the middle of the nineteenth century, there was a heightened demand in the West for knowledge about the “Flowery Kingdom”. But until well into the twentieth century, virtually the only direct source of information about China and the Chinese came from missionaries, in which respect they were often lauded as “cultural brokers”. As missionary communication of their experience provided Western readers with a vicarious experience of China, their cultural brokerage inexorably shaped Western popular perceptions of China and the Chinese in the West. These perceptions, when channeled politically, often had a defining effect on the nature and manner of the Western presence in China. This essay examines the China writing of John Macgowan, a veteran missionary from the London Missionary Society. What is interesting about Macgowan’s cultural brokerage is that unlike other missionaries (e.g., Arthur Smith) who often struggled with the difficulties between the missionary enterprise and Western expansionism, Macgowan uninhibitedly affirmed the intimacy between Mission and Empire. His writings on China and Chinese life — their social behavior and habits of thought, their relation with the living environment, the religious and cultural values by which they ordered their lives — therefore gave strong credence not only to the necessity, viability, and nobility of the christianizing project but ultimately to the sanctity of Western presence in China. In other words, Macgowan’s brokerage of his China knowledge exemplified the processes in which knowledge was legislated and communicated to establish the ideological conditions of the Western expansionism in China.

Wong Kar-Wai is the premier auteur of Hong Kong cinema. This article analyzes his 1994 film, Chungking Express, using the “auteur as structure” approach. This approach emphasizes the influence of the director on a film. It can only be applied to films that were mainly controlled by the director and not the studio or production company. Using this approach requires researchers to find the signature of the director within the film. This research introduces the work of an internationally-acclaimed film director to communication scholars, and it deciphers a film inherently complex to interpret. The authors’ analysis reveals Wong utilizes a French New Wave style to represent his view of a Hong Kong undergoing social and political transformations. Wong’s style is similar to French directors such as Truffaut and Godard because of his spontaneity and use of movement within the movie image. Even though Wong is influenced by the French New Wave, his films are also influenced by their physical and social environments. This is especially true in Chungking Express, with its crime urban surroundings, and constant references to expiration dates, the latter referring to Hong Kong’s hand-over to China.