The Journal of the British Association for Chinese Studies (JBACS)

Lancement du Journal of the British Association for Chinese Studies (JBACS) de la British Association for Chinese Studies (BACS) ISSN 2048-0601. Les articles sont librement accessibles en format PDF sur le site.

This is a peer-reviewed e-journal publishing original and innovative  research in the multidisciplinary field of Chinese Studies, with  articles in a wide range of subject areas – history, economics, politics, society, archaeology, language, literature, philosophy,  culture, gender, international relations and law – relating to modern  and pre-modern China.

Sommaire du volume 1 (December 2011)

• The Sino-French Connection and World War One, Paul Baile

This article examines the recruitment by Britain and France of almost 140,000 Chinese labourers to work in France during World War One and considers its implications. This topic has received much less attention than the recruitment of smaller numbers from other non- European, mostly colonial, sources. The article explores the reasons for this and the image of France among Chinese intellectuals at the time, taking the example of the Francophile Li Shizeng. The claims of French intellectuals that a close cultural affinity existed between China and France are also examined in the context of this influx of Chinese labourers.

• ‘In Memory of Norman Bethune’: Two Resurrections of the ‘Spirit of  Selflessness’ in Maoist China Christos Lynteris

This article examines how a single phrase praising the ‘spirit of selflessness’ of the Canadian doctor Norman Bethune, which appeared in his obituary by Mao Zedong in 1939, led to two conflicting exegeses in the medical literature of the People’s Republic of China. The first exegesis identified Bethune as a prototype of self-cultivation for medical workers, while the second identified him as a prototype of the abolition of the self. In this article I demonstrate how the two ‘resurrections’ of Dr Bethune’s ‘spirit of selflessness’ reflected and fuelled conflicting governmental understandings of the ‘technology of the self’ necessary for socialist construction during the first two decades of the People’s Republic of China.

Plus d’information sur le site

Jacqueline Nivard

More Posts