2016, Vol.6, No.1

This study focuses on the foreign media’s coverage of the foreign travels by the Chinese middle class. Starting from examining the Chinese middle class, this article reviews previous studies on the middle class. It proposes a “three-fold model for understanding the middle class,” and applies it to analyze the Weibo users, who, as a group, have the same demographic characteristics of the middle class. This model analyzes the characteristics of the foreign trips of the Chinese middle class, their use of the media, and their consumption behavior while on the trip. The aim is to examine their impact on the formation of class identity of the Chinese middle class, and how such identity formation, in turn, affects other parts of the Chinese society. By examining the texts and pictures on the micro-blogs and the interactions within the virtual communities on the internet, the findings were: the Chinese middle class has complex motives for traveling abroad – gaining experiences, leisure, and cultural interchange. The mode of travel was dominated by car and leisurely travel. The characteristics of the travels can be summarized as “expressing of culturedness and social statue, rational consumption, individualization and social diversification.” Chinese middle class travelers establish “realistic selves” by posting a combination of texts and pictures on micro-blogs. Currently, the trips abroad by the Chinese middle class have the function of stabilizing the Chinese society and promoting consumption. Their civility while traveling positively affects the mindset of the popular travelers. The negative effects of the conspicuous consumption of the Chinese middle class are not the dominant aspect of their travels. In conclusion, by examining the foreign travels of the Chinese middle class and their construction of the self on the social media, this study attempts to complement previous sociological studies on traveling and class, traveling and social media, as well as on the Chinese micro-blog.

Sleeping Together with Different Dreams?: Japanese Media’s Gaze Representation of Chinese Tourists

황성빈 | 2016, 6(1) | pp.373~403 | number of Cited : 0

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There has been a significant increase of news reports that feature Chinese tourists in Japan since 2012, when Japanese government started monetary easing to significantly devalue the Japanese Yen. However, it is a very peculiar phenomenon to have so many news reports focusing on tourists from a specific nation, China. Why does the Japanese media and its digital public fix their eyes on the Chinese tourists, not the Koreans, the Taiwanese or the European tourists?This paper analyzes Japanese mainstream media’s representation of the Chinese tourists and the Japanese digital public’s gaze on them. Analyzed sources include not only the mainstream newspapers and TV channels, but also the lowbrows such as the weeklies and the tabloids, and various news sites and Blogs etc. on the internet. The aim is to identify various opinions and positionalities regarding the subject matter, i.e. Japan’s China or Japanese perception of China/Chinese in relation to their own self-portrait, or self-image. Based on the findings from the analysis, this study argues that the gaze itself by Japanese media and its public on the Chinese tourists can be explained not only as a mechanism of othering China and the Chinese, but also as a process of construction of Japanese as the national subject, distinguished and differentiated from the other, the Chinese. In the process, the relation between the viewer and the viewed has been reversed: the viewed were not the Chinese tourists, but the Japanese. By gazing them through the various papers and monitors, what was actually looked at was the self, the Japanese and the undoubtedness of “us” and “our superiority”over the other, the Chinese. As for mutual penetration between the traditional media and the digital media space, there are something definitely shared through the dynamics of discourse, despite the diversity of the gaze and positionalities that are found both in the traditional media and the digital media space. Again, through the discursive practices that are analyzed here, it has been observed that honne 本音 space and its power has been widened and salient in the geography of news media and public opinion in Japan.

Cartographies of Asia in Latin America: Past, Present and Future of Asian Studies in LA

Claudia Costa Pinheiro | 2016, 6(1) | pp.405~423 | number of Cited : 0

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2016, Vol.6, No.1