Tim Summers
Biographic Data
| ID | 951263 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Tim Summers |
| GIVEN NAMES | Tim |
| FAMILY NAME | Summers |
| SIGNATURE | SUMMERS T |
| AFFILIATIONS | Chinese University of Hong Kong |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1030-9274 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 51 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 111 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 50 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
The Chinese Government’s Negotiating Strategy Over the Future of Hong Kong
The Politics of the Sino-British Joint Declaration on Hong Kong, 2014-2024
British economic strategy and regional institutions in Asia, 2016–2024
This paper examines the British approach to Asia and its regional institutions from the Brexit vote in 2016 to the British general election of July 2024. The paper analyses official government statements and debates among political elites about Britain’s foreign policy posture in the region, from the broad ‘Indo-Pacific tilt’ and the Belt and Road Initiative to engagement with specific regional institutions such as ASEAN, BRI, AIIB, CPTPP and bil…
Decolonisation in the age of globalisation
The Queerness of Video Game Music
Video game music is a significant site of queerness where normative demands are questioned, suspended or loosened. Games resist hegemonic musical logics, challenge musical value systems and use music to complicate essentialist notions of identity. This Element proposes three areas of queerness, each representing different relationships between 'queer design' and 'queer engagement', ranging fromunintentionally resistive to explicit engagement with…
The Dean of Shandong
Journal Article The Dean of Shandong: confessions of a minor bureaucrat at a Chinese university; Money machine: a trailblazing American venture in China Get access The Dean of Shandong: confessions of a minor bureaucrat at a Chinese university. By Daniel A Bell. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 2023. 208pp. £22.00. Isbn978 0 69124 712 0. Available as e-book.Money machine: a trailblazing American venture in China. By Weijian Shan. Hoboken, N…
Worsening British views of China in 2020
The Cambridge Companion to Video Game Music
Video game music has been permeating popular culture for over forty years. Now, reaching billions of listeners, game music encompasses a diverse spectrum of musical materials and practices. This book provides a comprehensive, up-to-date survey of video game music by a diverse group of scholars and industry professionals. The chapters and summaries consolidate existing knowledge and present tools for readers to engage with the music in new ways. M…
Maritime politics as discourse in the Indo/Asia-Pacific
This paper examines maritime politics across the Indo/Asia-Pacific during the 2010s by drawing on notions of geopolitics as discursive practice through which various actors shape understandings and trajectories of international politics. It first discusses the consequence of the idea that maritime issues in ‘the region’ are of ‘strategic importance’, which is used to justify the discursive and material engagement of both regional and extra-region…
Carrots, not Sticks
This analysis offers a historical assessment of “economic statecraft” in Beijing's approach to Hong Kong from 1997 to 2020. It discusses how the concept of “economic statecraft” can be applied to Beijing–Hong Kong relations given the nature of the “one country, two systems” framework, and looks at some differing perceptions about economic statecraft in Hong Kong. It argues that, during this period, economic tools were in general used by Beijing r…
Economic Statecraft in Anglo-Chinese Relations
This analysis demonstrates the use of economic statecraft in Anglo-Chinese negotiations over a new airport for Hong Kong. Leading to the signing of a memorandum of understanding in 1991, Chinese negotiators used bargaining leverage to withhold support for the airport and related projects to obtain British agreement for ‘consultation’ over major projects that straddled the transfer of sovereignty in 1997. Subsequent British flexibility on the timi…
Indo-Pacific empire
Over the last decade, the geopolitical profile of the area stretching from the Indian subcontinent and Indian Ocean to the Western Pacific has risen. Alongside this, a new discourse of the ‘Indo-Pa
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Negotiating the boundaries of China’s Belt and Road Initiative
This paper explores dynamic processes of (re)negotiation of boundaries of and in China’s Belt and Road Initiative. It identifies ambiguous temporal and spatial boundaries which create space for ongoing political and ideological contestation over the shape of the Belt and Road Initiative. The paper suggests that lack of clear geographical scope leaves open multiple futures for China’s global relations under the initiative. Chinese imaginaries hint…
Structural power and the financing of the Belt and Road Initiative
The question of financing the Belt and Road Initiative sharpens the broader debates about the intentions behind and implications of the initiative, in particular, whether it represents an alternative to or within globalization (global capitalism) and the broader global order as currently constituted. This paper addresses this by examining the institutions, actors, mechanisms, and nature of the (proposed) financing of Belt and Road projects. It ar…
Geocultural power
As Tim Winter asks at the start of Geocultural power, China is rising, but is it also ‘a rising cultural power’ (p. xii)? Winter addresses this by looking at the revival of ‘Silk Road’ discourse promoted by the Chinese government since 2013, examining it primarily from the perspective of the ways in which history and heritage have been deployed as part of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the wider ideas of ‘Silk Roads’ from which the BRI ta…
China's Hong Kong
The UK’s China Policy under U.S.-China Strategic Rivalry
This paper looks at issues in the formation of the United Kingdom’s policy toward China during a period of growing strategic rivalry between the United States and China, focusing particularly on the relationship between policy debates and the output of UK-based think tanks on China. By analyzing the policy debate and think tank output on three current key themes, including maritime politics in the South China Sea, whether to allow Chinese compani…
The belt and road initiative in Southwest China
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has been the subject of extensive analysis since late 2013. Most of this views it as a manifestation of China’s approach to global issues under Xi Jinping, whether economic, geopolitical, or as a bid to reshape globalization. There has so far been less research into the domestic dynamics of the BRI, including at the sub-national level in China. Based primarily on an examination of provincial-level policy documen…
A relational theory of world politics
Yaqing Qin's A relational theory of world politics—the first fully developed approach to International Relations (IR) theory from a Chinese scholar to be published in English—is motivated by the desire to look at IR from a different perspective. In the first part of the book, Qin describes how his approach is premised on the understanding that culture matters. He contends that social theory has a metaphysical core based on the background knowledg…
China's dream
There are plenty of books which give big picture accounts of Chinese politics, though as these two recent additions to the literature show, there is still scope for substantially different approaches and conclusions in examining China's governance today. Carl Minzner's End of an era sets out to show that earlier efforts at reform by China's ruling Communist Party (CPC) have gone into reverse. Minzner is particularly critical of the leadership und…
Power, perception and foreign policymaking
Handling the rise of China has not always been at the top of American or European policy agendas, but it probably marks the most strategic interstate issue the US and the EU have faced since the end of the Cold War. To date, most of the attempts to explain or assess the extent of China's rise had the intention of informing or influencing policy-making rather than examining the conclusions policy-makers themselves have drawn. Scott Brown's Power, …
Social movements in Taiwan's democratic transition
Accounts of Taiwan's transition from authoritarianism to democracy frequently emphasize the role of political leadership in that historical shift. But as numerous scholars have demonstrated, just as important (perhaps more so) was the impact of social movements and politics outside the KMT (the then ruling Kuomintang or Nationalist Party). Yun Fan's book on social movements in Taiwan's democratic transition offers a valuable empirical and theoret…
Education and society in post-Mao China
Is China's education system ‘successful’? Many think so, citing strong performance in international rankings in maths and sciences, the numbers of university graduates, or simply the basic education enrolment and literacy rates which are strikingly high for a developing economy. Others, however, question whether education in a one-party state can deliver the sort of innovative thinking needed for China to become the global ‘leading economy’ in an…
China’s Regions in an Era of Globalization. Routledge Contemporary China Series
China’s ‘New Silk Roads’
This paper argues that the Chinese government’s ‘belt and road’ initiative – the Silk Roads vision of land and maritime logistics and communications networks connecting Asia, Europe and Africa – has its roots in sub-national ideas and practices, and that it reflects their elevation to the national level more than the creation of substantially new policy content. Further, the spatial paradigms inherent in the Silk Roads vision reveal the reproduct…
Indo-Pacific empire
Over the last decade, the geopolitical profile of the area stretching from the Indian subcontinent and Indian Ocean to the Western Pacific has risen. Alongside this, a new discourse of the ‘Indo-Pa
The belt and road initiative in Southwest China
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has been the subject of extensive analysis since late 2013. Most of this views it as a manifestation of China’s approach to global issues under Xi Jinping, whether economic, geopolitical, or as a bid to reshape globalization. There has so far been less research into the domestic dynamics of the BRI, including at the sub-national level in China. Based primarily on an examination of provincial-level policy documen…
Structural power and the financing of the Belt and Road Initiative
The question of financing the Belt and Road Initiative sharpens the broader debates about the intentions behind and implications of the initiative, in particular, whether it represents an alternative to or within globalization (global capitalism) and the broader global order as currently constituted. This paper addresses this by examining the institutions, actors, mechanisms, and nature of the (proposed) financing of Belt and Road projects. It ar…
(Re)positioning Yunnan
This paper identifies imaginings since the early 1990s to reposition Yunnan from a peripheral province in the PRC to the centre of various regional constructs which involve territories across the PRC's borders, primarily in what are now known as southeast and south Asia. These narratives, which change over time and between actors, are justified using Yunnan's past linkages with territories along the ‘southern silk road’ and through a naturalized …
Negotiating the boundaries of China’s Belt and Road Initiative
This paper explores dynamic processes of (re)negotiation of boundaries of and in China’s Belt and Road Initiative. It identifies ambiguous temporal and spatial boundaries which create space for ongoing political and ideological contestation over the shape of the Belt and Road Initiative. The paper suggests that lack of clear geographical scope leaves open multiple futures for China’s global relations under the initiative. Chinese imaginaries hint…
Hong Kong in the shadow of China
Twenty years after its handover from British to Chinese sovereignty, Hong Kong is again making international headlines. The recent catalyst was the protests of autumn 2014—the ‘occupy’ or ‘umbrella’ movement—which marked the peak of debate in Hong Kong over political reform, in particular proposed changes to the way that Hong Kong's top official, the Chief Executive, is chosen. But the protests also brought to the surface a range of structural pr…
Geocultural power
As Tim Winter asks at the start of Geocultural power, China is rising, but is it also ‘a rising cultural power’ (p. xii)? Winter addresses this by looking at the revival of ‘Silk Road’ discourse promoted by the Chinese government since 2013, examining it primarily from the perspective of the ways in which history and heritage have been deployed as part of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the wider ideas of ‘Silk Roads’ from which the BRI ta…
China and the Mekong Region
This paper looks at constructions of the Mekong region with a particular focus on Chinese views. It draws out the differences between central and provincial Chinese perspectives, shows Chinese privileging of Greater Mekong Subregion economic cooperation in constructing the region, and outlines tensions between Chinese participation in and differentiation from the region
Power, perception and foreign policymaking
Handling the rise of China has not always been at the top of American or European policy agendas, but it probably marks the most strategic interstate issue the US and the EU have faced since the end of the Cold War. To date, most of the attempts to explain or assess the extent of China's rise had the intention of informing or influencing policy-making rather than examining the conclusions policy-makers themselves have drawn. Scott Brown's Power, …
British Policy toward Hong Kong and its Political Reform
Twenty years after the return of Hong Kong from British to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, this paper examines the UK’s policy toward Hong Kong over the last decade, with a particular focus on its approach toward the ongoing and intensifying political and constitutional debates in Hong Kong, which have partial origins in the British colonial legacy. The paper argues that the UK has been attempting a delicate balancing act in relation to Hong Kong be…
Carrots, not Sticks
This analysis offers a historical assessment of “economic statecraft” in Beijing's approach to Hong Kong from 1997 to 2020. It discusses how the concept of “economic statecraft” can be applied to Beijing–Hong Kong relations given the nature of the “one country, two systems” framework, and looks at some differing perceptions about economic statecraft in Hong Kong. It argues that, during this period, economic tools were in general used by Beijing r…
Economic Statecraft in Anglo-Chinese Relations
This analysis demonstrates the use of economic statecraft in Anglo-Chinese negotiations over a new airport for Hong Kong. Leading to the signing of a memorandum of understanding in 1991, Chinese negotiators used bargaining leverage to withhold support for the airport and related projects to obtain British agreement for ‘consultation’ over major projects that straddled the transfer of sovereignty in 1997. Subsequent British flexibility on the timi…
Social movements in Taiwan's democratic transition
Accounts of Taiwan's transition from authoritarianism to democracy frequently emphasize the role of political leadership in that historical shift. But as numerous scholars have demonstrated, just as important (perhaps more so) was the impact of social movements and politics outside the KMT (the then ruling Kuomintang or Nationalist Party). Yun Fan's book on social movements in Taiwan's democratic transition offers a valuable empirical and theoret…
Convergence or conflict in the Taiwan Strait
In Convergence or conflict in the Taiwan Strait, J. Michael Cole offers a comprehensive account of recent developments in Taiwan—across politics, society and external relations. The book is prompted by a sense that not enough international attention is paid to Taiwan, and that the island is often not well understood. Cole addresses this in 16 short chapters, split into four parts, which in turn explain the rationale for the book, discuss politica…
Discourses and institutions in China's maritime disputes
This article examines discourses around China's maritime disputes. It adopts an English School approach to international order, making use of institutions governing relations between states which are themselves discursive in nature. The article argues that discourse is a particularly important factor in maritime disputes given the ambiguities resulting from historical and ongoing changes in conceptions of maritime space and sovereignty. Further, …
La Chine et la région du Mékong
4. Pour les besoins de cet article, le terme rgion est ici utilis pour dsigner une ralit supra ou transnationale et non pour faire rfrence des sous-rgions nationales l'intrieur des tats-nations. 5. Voir par exemple, Arif Dirlik, The Asia-Pacific Idea: Reality and Representation in the Invention of a Regional Structure , in What Is in A Rim?, deuxime dition, Lanham, Md, Rowman and Littlefield, 1998. Comme Dirlik (p. 33, note 2), j'utiliserai rgion…
China and the Mekong Region
This paper looks at constructions of the Mekong region with a particular focus on Chinese views. It draws out the differences between central and provincial Chinese perspectives, shows Chinese privileging of Greater Mekong Subregion economic cooperation in constructing the region, and outlines tensions between Chinese participation in and differentiation from the region
(Re)positioning Yunnan
This paper identifies imaginings since the early 1990s to reposition Yunnan from a peripheral province in the PRC to the centre of various regional constructs which involve territories across the PRC's borders, primarily in what are now known as southeast and south Asia. These narratives, which change over time and between actors, are justified using Yunnan's past linkages with territories along the ‘southern silk road’ and through a naturalized …
Sparks of Meaning’
Comics have become a significant part of modern popular culture. This article examines the ways in which music is involved with comics, and develops methods for analysing musical moments in comic books. The output of the writer Alan Moore (b. 1953) is used as the domain for examining music and comics. This popular author's works are notable for their sophisticated use of music and their interaction with wider musical culture. Using case studies f…
Securing the safety of navigation in East Asia
Journal Article Securing the safety of navigation in East Asia: legal and political dimensions. Edited by Shicun Wu and Keyuan Zou: Solving disputes for regional cooperation and development in the South China Sea: a Chinese perspective. By Shicun Wu Get access Securing the safety of navigation in East Asia: legal and political dimensions. Edited by Shicun Wu and Keyuan Zou. Oxford, Cambridge, Philadelphia and New Delhi: Chandos Publishing. 2013. …
Forging China's military might
Journal Article Forging China's military might: a new framework for assessing innovation. Edited by Tai Ming Cheung Get access Forging China's military might: a new framework for assessing innovation. Edited by Tai Ming Cheung. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 2014. 295pp. Index. £27.90. ISBN 978 1 42141 157 6. Available as e-book. Tim Summers Tim Summers 1Chatham House, Hong Kong Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academi…
China's regional relations
Mark Beeson and Fujian Li's account of China's regional relations looks at the country's place in its vast and complex neighbourhood: China has land borders with 14 countries and maritime proximity to another half dozen. Chapters cover the historical background and China's economic rise; the development of regional institutions and contestation around East Asia and the Asia–Pacific; China's relations with South-East and North-East Asia; relations…
Society and politics in China today
Journal Article Society and politics in China today Get access TIM SUMMERS TIM SUMMERS 1Senior Consulting Fellow with the Asia Programme at Chatham House, and Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Centre for China Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Affairs, Volume 91, Issue 5, September 2015, Pages 1151–1160, https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2346.12403 Publi…
Understanding Video Game Music
Understanding Video Game Music develops a musicology of video game music by providing methods and concepts for understanding music in this medium. From the practicalities of investigating the video game as a musical source to the critical perspectives on game music - using examples including Final Fantasy VII, Monkey Island 2, SSX Tricky and Silent Hill - these explorations not only illuminate aspects of game music, but also provide conceptual id…
When China goes to the Moon... By Marco Aliberti
When looking back at China half a century ago, the year 1966 is usually remembered for the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. But, as we learn from Marco Aliberti's stimulating When China goes to the Moon..., it was also the year when China sent its first dog into space (p. 80), one year after the first proposal to put Chinese astronauts in space. This was part of a period of huge strategic and revolutionary ambition during which Lin Biao, Mao…
British Policy toward Hong Kong and its Political Reform
Twenty years after the return of Hong Kong from British to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, this paper examines the UK’s policy toward Hong Kong over the last decade, with a particular focus on its approach toward the ongoing and intensifying political and constitutional debates in Hong Kong, which have partial origins in the British colonial legacy. The paper argues that the UK has been attempting a delicate balancing act in relation to Hong Kong be…
China’s ‘New Silk Roads’
This paper argues that the Chinese government’s ‘belt and road’ initiative – the Silk Roads vision of land and maritime logistics and communications networks connecting Asia, Europe and Africa – has its roots in sub-national ideas and practices, and that it reflects their elevation to the national level more than the creation of substantially new policy content. Further, the spatial paradigms inherent in the Silk Roads vision reveal the reproduct…
Muslim, trader, nomad, spy
In Muslim, trader, nomad, spy, Sulmaan Wasif Khan gives an account of how events in Tibet from the 1950s to the early 1960s informed not just important elements of Chinese foreign policy, but also wider relations among Third World states in an era of post-colonial statebuilding. As bottom-up history, it is a delightful corrective to reductionist accounts of international relations which focus on state capitals—there are not many analyses of diplo…
China, the United States, and the future of central Asia
As the editor, David Denoon, notes at the start of China, the United States, and the future of central Asia, there is a vast literature on US—China relations. This book adds to it, but by focusing on an aspect less discussed in the field, that of central Asia. Plenty has been written on China and central Asia (see e.g. my review of Marlene Laruelle and Sebastien Peyrouse, The Chinese question in central Asia, Routledge, 2012; reviewed in Internat…
China under Mao
China under Mao: a revolution derailed. By Andrew G. Walder. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press. 2015. 433pp. Index. £28.00. ISBN 978 0 67405 815 6. Available as e-book. There is a continued fascination, both within and outside academia, with Chinese politics and society during the period when they were dominated by Mao Zedong. Andrew Walder's approach to China under Mao is to highlight the impact of decisions made by the Chinese leadership…
Rethinking the triangle
Rethinking the triangle: Washington–Beijing–Taipei. Edited by Brantly Womack and Yufan Hao. Singapore: World Scientific and University of Macau. 2016. 236pp. Index. £65.60. isbn 978 9 81471 312 2. Available as e-book. The starting-point for this book is a challenge to the idea that Taiwan is, or should be, a ‘problem’ in US–China relations. Rethinking the triangle between Washington, Beijing and Taipei could, it is argued, see the relationship be…
Ludomusicology
The last half-decade has seen the rapid and expansive development of video game music studies. As with any new area of study, this significant sub-discipline is still tackling fundamental questions concerning how video game music should be approached. In this volume, experts in game music provide their responses to these issues
Discourses and institutions in China's maritime disputes
This article examines discourses around China's maritime disputes. It adopts an English School approach to international order, making use of institutions governing relations between states which are themselves discursive in nature. The article argues that discourse is a particularly important factor in maritime disputes given the ambiguities resulting from historical and ongoing changes in conceptions of maritime space and sovereignty. Further, …
China's crisis behavior
Interstate crises, especially those which might involve China, have become a growing concern to those who follow geopolitics in east Asia. Kai He's concise study of China's crisis behaviour is therefore a welcome addition to the literature on Chinese foreign policy in the post-Cold War period. He develops a framework which he then applies to eight cases of crisis discussed in detail in the book's empirical chapters, followed in the conclusion by …
Taiwan's China dilemma
In early 2017 Taiwan is back in the news in ways no one quite expected, as a result of the telephone call between then US President-Elect Donald Trump and Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen at the beginning of December 2016. This has the potential to change US–China and cross-strait relations in fundamental ways. But underlying this is a long-standing structural dilemma for Taiwan, explored in dynamic detail in a new book by Syaru Shirley Lin. As L…
Ethnic conflict and protest in Tibet and Xinjiang
The far western regions of China, Tibet and Xinjiang, have typically been looked at in terms of their relations with the Chinese state, whether through the lens of statebuilding and incorporation or because of political challenges in the form of demands for independence or greater autonomy. Following major disturbances in Tibet and Xinjiang in 2008 and 2009 respectively, there has been particular interest in the reasons for ethnic conflict and pr…
Hong Kong in the shadow of China
Twenty years after its handover from British to Chinese sovereignty, Hong Kong is again making international headlines. The recent catalyst was the protests of autumn 2014—the ‘occupy’ or ‘umbrella’ movement—which marked the peak of debate in Hong Kong over political reform, in particular proposed changes to the way that Hong Kong's top official, the Chief Executive, is chosen. But the protests also brought to the surface a range of structural pr…
Convergence or conflict in the Taiwan Strait
In Convergence or conflict in the Taiwan Strait, J. Michael Cole offers a comprehensive account of recent developments in Taiwan—across politics, society and external relations. The book is prompted by a sense that not enough international attention is paid to Taiwan, and that the island is often not well understood. Cole addresses this in 16 short chapters, split into four parts, which in turn explain the rationale for the book, discuss politica…
Security relations between China and the European Union
Relations between the European Union and China have not produced a depth and breadth of research which would reflect the importance of these two actors in international affairs. Two new books, which examine different aspects of the bilateral relationship, are therefore welcome, particularly at a time when the relationship is facing a number of structural and political challenges. Security relations between China and the European Union, an in-dept…
Education and society in post-Mao China
Is China's education system ‘successful’? Many think so, citing strong performance in international rankings in maths and sciences, the numbers of university graduates, or simply the basic education enrolment and literacy rates which are strikingly high for a developing economy. Others, however, question whether education in a one-party state can deliver the sort of innovative thinking needed for China to become the global ‘leading economy’ in an…
Political science (45 works) · China (39 works) · Law (38 works) · Law (36 works) · Politics (34 works) · Sociology (27 works) · Economics (25 works) · Political economy (23 works) · History (16 works) · Economy (14 works)