• Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.125-147
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• 2020

On the World Refugee Day in 2017, Yao Chen, a Chinese actress, philanthropist, and social media influencer, posted messages in her Weibo in support of the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR). Yet, social media users quickly interpreted this supportive message of the refugee program as encouraging people to "accept and receive refugees" (jieshou nanmin) into China. Particularly, the category of Middle Eastern refugees elicited most criticism in China's cyberspace. As the inclusion of refugees is an integral part of immigrant multiculturalism, this article examines the limits of multicultural imagination of refugees―particularly those from the Middle Eastern and North Africa―in contemporary China. I argue that the limits of multicultural imagination in contemporary China is profoundly shaped by an intricate interweaving of domestic policies and global imaginaries toward refugees. By deploying a mixed methodology, such limits are examined from legal-institutional, ideological, and sociocultural perspectives. More specifically, three interrelated aspects will be highlighted in the article: (1) the global circulation of right-wing populism imaginaries, and their entanglements with the anti-Muslim sentiments in contemporary China; (2) the current insufficiency of the legal-institutional framework regarding refugees and asylum-seekers, which needs to be contextualized in China's modern history of dealing with refugee issues; (3) population politics, the rise of Han-centric nationalism, and their constraining impact on the interpretation of historical events related to cultural diversity. In conclusion, this article also offers potential implications for further examining the different yet potentially intersected genealogies of multicultural imaginaries beyond the Middle Eastern and North African refugees in Asia.

• Korean journal of communication and information
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• v.66
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• pp.184-210
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• 2014

There have been technologically distorted naturalization and overzealous digital culture in the formation and development of digital society in Korea. While the suppressive aspects of the 'neo-'authoritarian control and regulation have been excessively centered on the Internet, the autonomous actions of online users from below, with regards to their roles in agenda-setting function, have been evolved as the political. This paper aims to investigate the specificities in the developmental mode of digital technology in Korean society since the mid-90s. In this paper, 'techno-surplus' depicts the state that the abnormal is embedded within a technological artifact beyond its receptive ability. 'Techno-surplus society' designates such an extreme case of specifying technological surplus. In fact, the term of 'techno-surplus society' can be used for a metaphor symbolizing our society, in which social distortion and abnormality caused by 'techno-surplus' have been quite frequently happening, in its comparison to a degree of normality in the institutional politics. This paper explores the local specificities of 'techno-surplus society', in which the regressive aspects have stand out as being more different from the technological developments in China, Japan and the U.S.