China’s borderlands in the post-globalization era

Abstract

China is considered to be the biggest beneficiary of globalization, as evidenced by the growing volume and diversity of people, goods, and information moving across its borders. However, the increase in scholarly attention on China ’ s borderlands that is war-ranted by such economic, social, and political activities is absent. This special issue of China Information is committed to new research that addresses mounting challenges facing studies on China ’ s borderlands, as well as borderland studies in general. This special issue presents the work of emerging scholars who investigate cross-border migration and the key characteristics of China ’ s borderlands, focusing on previously under-studied places that were out of the reach of scholars for years. These studies offer a lens through which the socio-economic and politico-institutional changes in China ’ s borderlands can be understood within the broader context of China ’ s time-compressed global rise. A cursory glance at the research topics may give the impression that this special issue appears to investigate migratory phenomena in geographically remote places on the peripheries of the country. However, we suggest that China ’ s rise is inseparable from, and critical to, a variety of complex phenomena that should be scrutinized and re-evaluated respectively in each contribution to this special issue. As areas experiencing rapid changes, China ’ s borderlands are the sites of a multitude of processes embedded in the social transformation which affects the country ’ s borderlands as much as its coastal regions.