Old Crossroads and New Connections along the PRC’s borders
International Workshop at the Asia Research Institute, NUS, Singapore
1–2 March 2012
What does China’s rise mean for its immediate neighbours? This is the question the ARI workshop “The Art of Neighbouring” adressed. Reflecting on the PRC’s rapid economic growth, its strategic decisions to foster trade, secure influence and access to natural resources, and its efforts to prevent unrest in the borderlands, the workshop focused on how people’s lives and futures are affected by living along the PRC’s borders.
For local societies situated within zones of contact, the close proximity to the PRC is becoming increasingly relevant. As rising China (the nation, the notion, the buzzword) channels aspirations, triggers fears, and creates opportunities, “the art of neighbouring” becomes a crucial skill in the borderlands – a skill that includes evading, openly opposing, making use of, or renegotiating the border situation.
The shared experience of neighbouring is shaped by the making of borders and their “closures” and “openings”. In the first half of the 20th century, the fuzziness of erstwhile frontier zones was replaced by sharp contours of the ‘geo-bodies’ of nation-states. Political and military conflicts between the PRC and its neighbouring states brought many long-established trans-border relations to a halt; more recently, new stimuli of economic growth and material prosperity readily impelled a momentum of “opening up”. As ancient crossroads emerge as zones of contact and translation again, borderland communities actively engage with new possibilities; they also become targets of new regulatory regimes to “manage” the flows of people and goods between nation states.
The workshop explored the ways in which the closure and re-opening of China’s borders condition the myriad realities of making as well as being China’s neighbours through peace and turmoil. We see it as the beginning of a continuing reflection on the topic. By theorizing “the art of neighbouring” we intend to develop an alternative perspective on border practices and strategies and gain new understandings of the relations between nations, territories, geo-political positionalities, and historical connections.
The workshop was organised by Martin Saxer, Zhang Juan, and Valerie Yeo. Stay tuned for news and future publications.