Chris Chung
I am a China Research Fellow at the Centre for China Policy Research and Coherence at Global Affairs Canada, which combines academic research with policy analysis and advising for the Canadian government. My focus during this postdoctoral fellowship concerns China’s internal and international policies and policy drivers, and their impact on Canada-China relations, especially regarding maritime disputes.
I graduated from my PhD program in History at the University of Toronto in November 2022, which I conducted under the supervision of Professor Li Chen. Using the South China Sea islands dispute as a case study, my research investigates how the global flow of ideas and activities of everyday people vitally informed Chinese state conceptions of space and sovereignty in the maritime frontier since the late eighteenth century.
My doctoral dissertation, titled "Fluid Realms: Chinese Visions of Maritime Space in the South China Sea Islands," explores the pivotal roles that non-government actors across the globe played in Qing and Republican claims-making over the Pratas, Paracel, and Spratly Islands, such as fishers, merchants, and community organizations. Drawing from largely unused Chinese archival files, I trace how these non-official actors compelled government adoption of their views by fusing disparate Qing notions of maritime space with incoming Western and Japanese ideas of geography, international law, and the nation-state. Chinese officials, I argue, were regularly forced to negotiate their political worldviews with the non-official narratives they relied on to understand the islands, their place within the emerging nation-state — and indeed, what constituted China itself.
My current postdoctoral fellowship follows one year of adjunct service as Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream in Chinese history (2023-24) and another year before that as Sessional Lecturer (2022-23) at the University of Toronto. I have taught a wide array of undergraduate courses. These range from junior-level survey courses such as the History of China (two-semester course) and Introduction to East Asian History, to specially designed advanced seminar courses such as the Maritime Frontier in Late Imperial China, 1368-1912 and Maps, Guns, and Silver: China's Global Connections through Objects since 1600. These courses commonly incorporate many of the same critical methods and themes that my own research uses to dissect nationalist and top-down nation-state-centric narratives of history, such as by studying discourse, power, border-making, modernity, and the importance of non-state actors in these aspects. They pay special attention to the transnational, regional, and global connections that animated the history of China and East Asia. To this end, my teaching regularly entails content and readings from various disciplines, such as history, anthropology, and political science, and relates them to various issues and topics in class, past and present.
Supervisors: Li Chen, Takashi Fujitani, and Tong Lam
I graduated from my PhD program in History at the University of Toronto in November 2022, which I conducted under the supervision of Professor Li Chen. Using the South China Sea islands dispute as a case study, my research investigates how the global flow of ideas and activities of everyday people vitally informed Chinese state conceptions of space and sovereignty in the maritime frontier since the late eighteenth century.
My doctoral dissertation, titled "Fluid Realms: Chinese Visions of Maritime Space in the South China Sea Islands," explores the pivotal roles that non-government actors across the globe played in Qing and Republican claims-making over the Pratas, Paracel, and Spratly Islands, such as fishers, merchants, and community organizations. Drawing from largely unused Chinese archival files, I trace how these non-official actors compelled government adoption of their views by fusing disparate Qing notions of maritime space with incoming Western and Japanese ideas of geography, international law, and the nation-state. Chinese officials, I argue, were regularly forced to negotiate their political worldviews with the non-official narratives they relied on to understand the islands, their place within the emerging nation-state — and indeed, what constituted China itself.
My current postdoctoral fellowship follows one year of adjunct service as Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream in Chinese history (2023-24) and another year before that as Sessional Lecturer (2022-23) at the University of Toronto. I have taught a wide array of undergraduate courses. These range from junior-level survey courses such as the History of China (two-semester course) and Introduction to East Asian History, to specially designed advanced seminar courses such as the Maritime Frontier in Late Imperial China, 1368-1912 and Maps, Guns, and Silver: China's Global Connections through Objects since 1600. These courses commonly incorporate many of the same critical methods and themes that my own research uses to dissect nationalist and top-down nation-state-centric narratives of history, such as by studying discourse, power, border-making, modernity, and the importance of non-state actors in these aspects. They pay special attention to the transnational, regional, and global connections that animated the history of China and East Asia. To this end, my teaching regularly entails content and readings from various disciplines, such as history, anthropology, and political science, and relates them to various issues and topics in class, past and present.
Supervisors: Li Chen, Takashi Fujitani, and Tong Lam
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Specifically, my dissertation identifies a deeper transition between two discursive frameworks that predominantly guided political understandings of maritime space and sovereignty in late imperial and modern China. The first of these spatial modes, which I term “islands of sovereignty,” prioritized political control over imperial subjects and the boats they used to traverse the seas. Maritime space was thus only ever understood within and supplementary to this goal’s fulfillment. Following the advent of foreign imperialism in China with the First Opium War, however, “islands of sovereignty” was gradually repurposed to effect a second maritime spatial mode. This framework, which I label “markers of effective occupation,” increasingly centred Chinese conceptions of maritime space and sovereignty upon precisely-defined national territory using incoming conceptions of international law and modern geography. Maritime peoples, formerly the target of Qing efforts to order the largely non-delineated sea, instead became a means towards ‘evidencing’ the emerging Chinese nation-state’s maritime borders. My dissertation then uncovers the central roles that non-government actors played in facilitating this process, which I contend fueled the formation of China’s island claims.
Specifically, my dissertation identifies a deeper transition between two discursive frameworks that predominantly guided political understandings of maritime space and sovereignty in late imperial and modern China. The first of these spatial modes, which I term “islands of sovereignty,” prioritized political control over imperial subjects and the boats they used to traverse the seas. Maritime space was thus only ever understood within and supplementary to this goal’s fulfillment. Following the advent of foreign imperialism in China with the First Opium War, however, “islands of sovereignty” was gradually repurposed to effect a second maritime spatial mode. This framework, which I label “markers of effective occupation,” increasingly centred Chinese conceptions of maritime space and sovereignty upon precisely-defined national territory using incoming conceptions of international law and modern geography. Maritime peoples, formerly the target of Qing efforts to order the largely non-delineated sea, instead became a means towards ‘evidencing’ the emerging Chinese nation-state’s maritime borders. My dissertation then uncovers the central roles that non-government actors played in facilitating this process, which I contend fueled the formation of China’s island claims.