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WORK TITLE: The China Boom
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BIRTHDATE: 1972
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http://soc.jhu.edu/directory/ho-fung-hung/ * http://krieger.jhu.edu/sociology/wp-content/uploads/sites/28/2012/02/cvcurrent-4-2016.pdf * https://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-china-boom/9780231164184 * https://www.chinafile.com/contributors/ho-fung-hung
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LC control no.: n 2008042851
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HEADING: Hung, Ho-fung
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100 1_ |a Hung, Ho-fung
400 1_ |a Kung, Gaofeng
670 __ |a Rethinking the Hong Kong cultural identity, c1998: |b t.p. (Ho-fung Hung) t.p. verso (author’s biog.: graduate student, Dept of Sociology, State Univ. of NY at Binghamton) end of work (Chinese abstract: Kung Gaofeng [in Chinese])
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PERSONAL
Born in 1972.
EDUCATION:Chinese University of Hong Kong, bachelor’s degree; SUNY-Binghamton, M.A.; Johns Hopkins University, Ph.D. (sociology).
ADDRESS
CAREER
Indiana University-Bloomington, teacher; Johns Hopkins University, Henry M. and Elizabeth P. Wiesenfeld Associate Professor in Political Economy.
AWARDS:The Social Science History Association’s President’s Award for Protest with Chinese Characteristics, 2010.
WRITINGS
Contributor of articles to academic journals, including American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, Development and Change, New Left Review, Review of International Political Economy, and Asian Survey.
SIDELIGHTS
Rethinking the Hong Kong Cultural Identity
Ho-fung Hung is the Henry M. and Elizabeth P. Wiesenfeld Associate Professor in Political Economy at the Johns Hopkins University and the editor of China and the Transformation of Global Capitalism. Before joining Johns Hopkins, he was a teacher at Indiana University-Bloomington. Hung writes about global political economy, protest, nation-state formation, and social theory, with a focus on East Asia. He has published articles in academic journals, including American Journal of Sociology, New Left Review, and Asian Survey. He also edited China and the Transformation of Global Capitalism, a 2009 volume. Hung earned his bachelor’s degree from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, a master’s degree from SUNY-Binghamton, and a Ph.D. degree in sociology from Johns Hopkins.
In 1998 Hung published Rethinking the Hong Kong Cultural Identity: The Case of Rural Ethnicities, in which he examines “Hongkongese,” a consumerist and cosmopolitan way of life that emerged in the city. Hong Kong has ethnic groups, including native villages and Chinese immigrants of different dialects and geographic origins. Hung discusses how these different groups melded to create a distinct Hong Kong identity. He looks at the politico-economic processes of colonial state building, industrialization, and urbanization that have integrated the livelihoods of different ethnicities into the metropolis. He also examines social and cultural identity, tensions between rural and urban people, and urban-centric culture.
Protest with Chinese Characteristics
Hung also wrote the 2011 Protest with Chinese Characteristics: Demonstrations, Riots, and Petitions in the Mid-Qing Dynasty. (The Qing dynasty lasted from 1644 to 1912). He looks at nearly one thousand instances of protest in China from the eighteenth to the early-nineteenth centuries to examine the evolution of Chinese dissent, which differs from Western methods. Hung describes Qing dynasty protests, petitions, rallies, riots, market strikes, and other forms of dissent to reveal that centralization of political power and an expanding market, along with Confucian orthodoxy, contributed to the nature of protesters’ strategies and appeals in Qing China. The quest for justice and autonomy, as well as filial respect for the imperial government, created this period’s unique form of dissent and protest. The book received the Social Science History Association’s President’s Award for 2010.
David D. Buck observed in China Review International: “Hung has deployed strong evidence to emphasize the differences between the West and the rest of the world.” Buck added: “Hung’s characterizations of the subperiods of the mid-Qing may not stand up to further research, but, nonetheless, his evidence of differing patterns of protest in mid-Qing China will become a corrective to those who overemphasize the converging and homogenizing forces in modern history.”
The China Boom
In 2016 Hung published The China Boom: Why China Will Not Rule the World. Using cutting-edge historical, sociological, and political analysis, Hung contends that rather than becoming an economic world power, China’s expected rise is stymied by several factors. He points to China’s status quo influenced by free trade and American domination, competing interests and economic realities that temper China’s rise. Holding China back are four common misconceptions: China can innovate by offering an alternative model of growth; China is altering power relations between the East and the West; China is capable of diminishing the global power of the United States; and the Chinese economy could have restored the world’s wealth after the 2008 financial crisis.
Hung also explains how China reinforces the global dollar standard by purchasing U.S. bonds, the global impact of China’s economic boom, how Maoism fits with Chinese capitalism, China’s stock market crash of 2015-16, and China’s practices of exploiting debt bubbles. Writing in Library Journal, Casey Watters remarked that Hung “accomplishes both goals while providing a provocative, albeit somewhat socialist-leaning, account of the history of Chinese capitalism.” In Publishers Weekly, a contributor called the book a challenging but informative study that might be too scholarly for a nonacademic audience, and that Hung “paints a convincing picture that China may not be the superpower many predicted it to be.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
China Review International, fall, 2011, David D. Buck, “Finding Distinctive Chinese Characteristics in Qing Era Popular Protests,” review of Protest with Chinese Characteristics, p. 128.
Library Journal, October 15, 2015, Casey Watters, review of The China Boom: Why China Will Not Rule the World, p. 98.
ONLINE
Johns Hopkins University Department of Sociology Web site, http://soc.juh.edu/ (April 25, 2017), author faculty profile.
Publishers Weekly Online, http://www.publishersweekly.com/ (April 1, 2017), review of The China Boom.
I am an associate professor at Johns Hopkins Sociology. My scholarly interest includes global political economy, protest, nation-state formation, and social theory, with a focus on East Asia. I received my bachelor degree from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, my MA degree from SUNY-Binghamton, and my PhD degree in Sociology from Johns Hopkins. Prior to joining the Hopkins faculty, I taught at the Indiana University-Bloomington.
Ho-fung Hung
Links:
Hong Kong: Still One Country, Two Systems?
Ho-fung Hung is the Henry M. Elizabeth P. Wiesenfeld Associate Professor in Political Economy at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of the award-winning book The China Boom: Why China Will Not Rule the World and Protest with Chinese Characteristics: Demonstrations, Riots, and Petitions in the Mid-Qing Dynasty, both published by Columbia University Press. His articles have appeared in American Journal of Sociology, the American Sociological Review, Development and Change, the New Left Review, the Review of International Political Economy, Asian Survey, and elsewhere. His analyses of the Chinese and global political economy and Hong Kong politics have been featured or cited in The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News, BBC News, The Guardian, Folha de S. Paulo (Brazil), The Straits Times (Singapore), Xinhua Monthly, People’s Daily, among other publications.
Last Updated: September 1, 2016
- See more at: https://www.chinafile.com/contributors/ho-fung-hung#sthash.cSIjiLzk.dpuf
Finding distinctive Chinese characteristics in Qing era
popular protests
David D. Buck
China Review International.
18.2 (Fall 2011): p128.
COPYRIGHT 2011 University of Hawaii Press
http://uhpress.hawaii.edu/journals/
Full Text:
Ho-fung Hung. Protest with Chinese Characteristics: Demonstrations, Riots and Petitions in the Mid-Qing Dynasty. New York: Columbia
University Press, 2011. 288 pp. Hardcover $50.00. ISBN 978-0-231-15202-0.
This title already has won the Social Science History Association's President's Award for 2010. The award is given to a first published work, and
this book displays careful social science research and broad interpretative scope. Ho-fung Hung has extracted from the Qing dynasty's Veritable
Records (Qing shilu) more than 950 cases of popular protests against the Qing government in the hundred years from 1740 to 1839. He has
supplemented this material with work in the First Historical Archives in Beijing and the Palace Museum in Taiwan as well as careful reading of
secondary materials.
The century under investigation covers most of the Qianlong emperor's reign (1736-1796) and the reigns of his successors: his son, the Jiaqing
emperor (1796-1820), and grandson, the Daoguang emperor (1821-1851). Then Ho-fung Hung breaks down his data into three shorter time
periods of twenty years each and draws conclusions about the different patterns of protest he finds. He uses established categories from other
social science scholars of protest, particularly Charles Tilly, to classify this data. To supplement his statistical analysis, Hung adds detailed
descriptions of several incidents from each subperiod.
Hung finds shifting patterns of protest in three twenty-year subperiods and devotes more than half of this work to discussing these differences.
The first subperiod, from 1740 to 1759, comes during the early years of the Qianlong emperor's long reign. It was marked by general prosperity
and aggressive state expansion, including the pacification of the far western regions of Mongolia and the establishment of Xinjiang (new
territory). Hung is not concerned with this expansion, but rather deals with protests within the Chinese heartland of the Qing empire. He
characterizes the protests from this period as "filial-loyal demonstrations" (p. 68), in which Chinese protesters accepted the Qing mandate to rule
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and sought to bring about changes by impressing the emperor with their loyalty and filial devotion. Many protests from this era took a peaceful
form and showed respect toward officials as parental figures. Demonstrations included kneeling in worshipful postures before magistrates.
The second subperiod runs from 1776 to 1795, during the last decades of the Qianlong emperor's reign, when his Manchu protege, Heshen,
dominated the government. In these years, the elderly emperor exercised lax control and tolerated corruption at all levels of government, led by
Heshen's own avaricious behavior. Hung finds that under these conditions, protestors became defiant toward both the emperor and his officials.
No longer respectful, the protesters took forceful action, including open rebellion. The White Lotus Rebellion (1796-1805) was the culmination
of this period. He labels this as a time when "riots [turned] into rebellion" (p. 102).
The final subperiod, from 1820 to 1839, comes in a time known as the Daoguang Depression, marked by financial and monetary instability of the
Qing empire, resulting from declining tax revenues, silver outflow to purchase opium imports, and the breakdown of the Grand Canal grain
shipments. These made up the most obvious examples of failing state policies. Hung sees this period as an era of "resistance and petitions" (p.
135) during which the Qing empire's Chinese subjects resumed a filial and loyal manner toward the emperor, but vented their antagonism on local
officials. Tax riots and open rebellion declined because of general awareness of the declining capacities of the Qing administration. Protestors
resumed their appeals to the emperor's mercy and sought his Confucian responsibility to his subjects. Nevertheless, popular resistance to state
policies grew as economic and social conditions worsened.
Hung's statistical data reveal continuing forms of protests across the century, and he draws his general characterizations for each twenty-year
subperiod from increased percentages of certain kinds of protest within each. When Hung's conclusion about the century from 1740 to 1839 is
compared with those of his John Hopkins colleague William T. Rowe's in China's Last Empire: The Great Qing (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2009), they agree in a general outline. Yet Hung lays even greater emphasis on the high levels of prosperity, commercialization,
and social complexity in eighteenth-century China, as well as seeing an early onset of weakness during the Qianlong reign, which is tied to the
emperor's personal conduct toward his two empresses as well as his unquestioning devotion to his grandfather's policies. In Hung's view, these
caused the Qianlong emperor to ignore dealing with the changing circumstances of the empire. His grandfather, the Kangxi emperor (r. 1661-
1722), had adopted policies of fixed taxation at low rates and Confucian concern for the livelihood of his subjects. Hung finds Qianlong followed
closely and seemingly unquestioningly many of his grandfather's policies. Hung also finds a greater revival of the leadership under the Jiaqing
emperor than does Rowe. In general, Hung offers sharper characterizations of the reigns of these three Qing emperors than Rowe.
Other historians disagree with Hung's characterization of the last decades of Qianlong's rule. Wensheng Wang in "Prosperity and Its Discontents:
Contextualizing Social Protest in the late Qianlong Reign" (Frontiers in Chinese History 6, no. 1 [2011], pp. 347-369) states that a crisis was
inevitable because of the rising Chinese population. Wang rejects the notion that Qianlong blindly followed Kangxi's policies. Rather, he argues it
was Qianlong's efforts to expand government control over popular religious sects that triggered social protests, such as the White Lotus Rebellion
(1796-1805).
In the final chapter, Hung uses his conclusions about the changing patterns of popular protest in the mid-Qing dynasty to challenge the
assumption of convergence that underlies so much of modernization theory. This is one of the oldest and reoccurring debates in social science
history. As his title "Protest with Chinese Characteristics" suggests, Hung rejects the premise that the history of the non-Western world will
conform to the general patterns observed in European and North American history in the post-1800 modern era. Hung argues that popular protest
in China differs significantly from Europe from the eighteenth century to the present. He finds that scholars of early modern and modern Europe
generally have argued that popular protests have a single pattern, moving from traditional to modern forms. In traditional protests, the participants
seek to preserve some established practices from which they have benefitted, such as access to grazing or woodlands or assistance in food
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shortages. Modern protests advance new claims to natural or human rights that exceed, by far, their traditional privileges. In traditional protests,
local authorities were the main targets, while in modern protests, the entire governmental structure finds itself under challenge.
Ho-fung Hung rejects theories of convergence as Eurocentric and finds that in China protests follow a cyclical pattern first described by the
distinguished social scientist G. William Skinner. Skinner argued that Chinese communities experienced a cycle in which they were open to the
official system during periods of prosperity, but returned to a closed or isolated attitude during times of dynastic decline and disorder. Thus, the
changing character of protest in Hung's three subperiods reflects the peasantry's "strategic choice of action in the context of the changing
capacities of the state" (p. 171). Hung writes that, as the Qing state became less able govern with benevolence and increased its exaction, "the
state became part of the problem [and] to fend off predatory local government agents, local communities invoked their communal solidarity in the
form of tax riots, attacks on officials and the like" (p. 172).
Hung asserts that Chinese intellectual and political life in the mid-Qing era existed without any real concern for the issues of "natural rights" of
individuals or the general populace. Until these concepts were introduced into Chinese life in the late nineteenth century, protests in China
retained their distinctly different character. He concludes, "non-Western protests follow their own rhythms of change and are delimited by their
own traditions of claims and repertoires" (p. 200).
Although Hung's arguments rest on evidence from the mid-Qing, he gives some space to the nature of protest in China since the mid-nineteenth
century. As long as China remained free of the Western concern with the concepts of rights and citizenship, Hung concludes that protests retained
their distinctive Chinese characteristics. Throughout the book, Hung emphasizes the political-economic causation of protests so closely associated
with Charles Tilly, but introduces briefly the work of scholars who argue that dominant cultural patterns are more important in shaping protest in
all societies. Hung agrees with these ideas, for his interpretations rest on the assertion of a special Chinese pattern of protest shaped by NeoConfucianism
with its emphasis on loyalty and filial piety. Hung believes that following the mid-nineteenth-century Opium Wars, the
combination of changes in the Chinese economy and the decline of Neo-Confucian orthodoxy produced the fatal weakening of the Qing dynasty.
At that juncture, Chinese politics opened to new ideas from the West that introduced the concepts of the nation-state, citizenship, and rights.
In an epilogue, Hung describes how some features of traditional Chinese protests remain in present-day demonstrations, including limited
violence at the local level and appeals to the sympathy of officials and party leaders. He follows the conclusions of Elizabeth Perry, who has
described protests in present-day China as directed at bad officials or bad policies within the prevailing system, but never attempting to overturn
the political and economic order itself. Hung agrees with Perry that such protests actually may strengthen the existing political economic order by
rectifying its weaknesses.
Hung is most certainly correct to argue against the idea that modernization leads inevitably to the replication of the norms of the Western political
economy. Obviously present-day Japanese, Iranian, Peruvian, South African, or other non-Western political systems do not replicate exactly the
forms and content of European and North American political systems. Still, many Western governments and their leaders often act as if other
peoples are just waiting to duplicate all the features of the West. The contradiction remains that, while differences survive, the reality of
convergence in the contemporary world will continue to grow.
In the book, Ho-fung Hung has deployed strong evidence to emphasize the differences between the West and the rest of the world. As Wensheng
Wang's recent article suggests, Hung's characterizations of the subperiods of the mid-Qing may not stand up to further research, but, nonetheless,
his evidence of differing patterns of protest in mid-Qing China will become a corrective to those who over emphasize the converging and
homogenizing forces in modern history.
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David D. Buck is a professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He is a former editor of the Journal of Asian Studies.
Buck, David D.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Buck, David D. "Finding distinctive Chinese characteristics in Qing era popular protests." China Review International, Fall 2011, p. 128+.
General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA302297070&it=r&asid=d2170874433c467a5f933c00e310e7e9. Accessed 15 Mar.
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A302297070
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Hung, Ho-Fung. The China Boom: Why China Will Not
Rule the World
Casey Watters
Library Journal.
140.17 (Oct. 15, 2015): p98.
COPYRIGHT 2015 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
Hung, Ho-Fung. The China Boom: Why China Will Not Rule the World. Columbia Univ. (Contemporary Asia in the World). Nov. 2015. 256p.
illus. notes. bibliog. index. ISBN 9780231164184. $35; ebk. ISBN 9780231540223. ECON
In the wake of China's unprecedented growth and recent military expansion, many see China poised to replace the United States as the next
hegemonic power. Hung (sociology, Johns Hopkins; Protest with Chinese Characteristics) argues that by purchasing U.S. bonds, China reinforces
the global dollar standard and by extension this country's economic capacity. Divided into two parts, the book first sets out to provide an overview
of the development of capitalism in China, a task the author undertakes while, interestingly, arguing that Maosim fits within the Chinese capitalist
progression. Second, it seeks to examine the global impact of China's "capitalist boom." The author accomplishes both goals while providing a
provocative, albeit somewhat socialist-leaning, account of the history of Chinese capitalism. He claims that the impacts of Chinese growth are felt
in the developing world, but that "China has not challenged U.S. global dominance despite its leaders' postures and nationalistic press's rhetoric.
On the contrary, it has, been a key force in helping perpetuate U.S. global dominance." VERDICT This valuable treatise will appeal to both
scholars and more casual readers with an interest in China.--Casey Watters, Shanghai Jiao Tong Univ.
Watters, Casey
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Watters, Casey. "Hung, Ho-Fung. The China Boom: Why China Will Not Rule the World." Library Journal, 15 Oct. 2015, p. 98. General
OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA431617188&it=r&asid=bafdb32e055fa3231791d64da787d4fd. Accessed 15 Mar.
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A431617188