Oxford China Academics
Oxford In China > Oxford China Academics > Rogier Creemers
Dr Rogier Creemers
Dr Creemers is a Rubicon Scholar, researching Chinese media law and policy at the Programme for Comparative Media Law and Policy at the University of Oxford. He is also co-editor of the blog series, OxOn China. Prior
to joining the University of Oxford, Creemers was the Euro-Asian Law and
Business Studies’ Executive Programme Coordinator at the University of
Maastricht. He holds two Masters of Arts degrees from the University of
Leuven, in Sinology and International Relations, and a Doctoral degree in Law
from the University of Maastricht.
He edits the China Copyright and Media website, an online resource for information about Chinese law and policy regarding public communication
He edits the China Copyright and Media website, an online resource for information about Chinese law and policy regarding public communication
Give us a flavor of your daily experience as an Oxford academic.
As I am a research fellow, my daily experience is somewhat different from the typical Oxford academic, whose days will often be filled by teaching. Generally, in the morning before I have breakfast, I read my China-related news feeds and respond, when necessary, to e-mails from China that came in during the night, due to the time difference. When I’m in the office, most of my time is occupied by my research work: finding, translating and analysing sources, reading secondary literature and writing. One of the sweet sorrows of Oxford is that during term time, there is a continuous stream of events, seminars and conferences. Many of them are very interesting, and it is tempting to spend a lot of time on them, so some selection is necessary if I want to get my own work done. Partly, I’m to blame myself, as I like to organise small events to discuss interesting aspects of China’s media and policy landscape. I travel to China regularly, over the past few years primarily because of an EU project that my department supports, and which requires us to organise discussion seminars and training activities with Chinese partners. Somewhat less fun, but quite important, is the continuous grant-writing. I’d like to develop a research programme on Chinese legal theory and thought at the University, and I am currently thinking the different elements of such a programme through.
Tell us about your educational background and how you became interested in Sinology?
I grew up in a little village in Belgium, and was quite keen to go out and see the world. We had a rather good public library where I grew up, and I’d take out books on a number of different cultures. For some reason, China stuck because its art, literature and history intrigued me, and so when I went to university in Leuven, I enrolled in Sinology. Now, this was a rather classical course, and so when I went to study at Peking University in 2004, I started discovering contemporary China. I decided that I wanted to learn more about China in the world, and to when I went back to Belgium, I took a Master’s degree in International Relations. It turned out, however, that it wasn’t very easy to find a job with that profile, and so I spent some time teaching Chinese as a foreign language, amongst others in adult classes. One of my students there was a professor at Maastricht University, who decided to offer me a job in which I would coordinate Euro-Asian activities within the Faculty of Law, and could write a doctorate as well. No need to say I was very happy to take it, and so I spent the next three years researching media piracy in China and its relationship with international trade law.
What is New Sinology? How do you use this approach in your own research?
New Sinology is a term put forward by the Australian professor Geremie Barme, which briefly put means to engage with contemporary China in its full complexity, by paying profound attention both to its classical and modern culture, language and society, using a broad spectrum of methodological tools. I came into academic research from the angle of law, and one of the things I noticed in legal studies is that there is rather a lack of researchers who both have a solid foundation in the discipline, and a deep knowledge about China’s legal history and culture. The result is that quite often, academic research work about China does not, in fact, give us a lot of new information. It evaluates legal reform and proposes policy advise on the basis of superficial axioms about how Chinese society is deemed to work. More often than not, this toes a particular line about China which is either part of official discourse or of foreign politically motivated jargon, and neither is a good basis for academic work, if our objective is to pursue a rich and textured understanding. What I try to do, is to understand the historical development of communications law in its broadest sense: the question about how the State governs the production and dissemination of ideas. At the moment, I am working on the early history part of this timeline, as I’d like to understand how evolving print technology, literacy, thought and political structuring set the stage for both the rejection and continuation of particular political or legal elements as modernisation deepened from the late Empire onward. It’s quite interesting to see that the Party continues to use particular political concepts which were developed more than two thousand years ago, and so in order to understand how these concepts are used in China today, some notion of history is important.
What are the most important changes in China’s media landscape over the past decade, and what are the implications for its governance?
The biggest change is, without a doubt, the advent of the Internet. For the first time in history, individual Chinese citizens have a tool that allows them to communicate on a large scale, without a government license or prior permission. Hitherto, the most important leadership tactic to maintain hegemony in the ideological sphere was to fragment the media sphere, along geographical and sectoral lines, and create particular structures of privilege. These structures determined whether a particular message could be published depending on the identity of the author, the scope of the audience, the particular channel through which it was published, and so on. This inevitably meant that the media diet of the average Chinese citizen was rather limited. The Internet has changed much of this, even thought we do often get it wrong. Many observers say that the importance of social media lies in the fact that Chinese citizens can now publish their political opinions. I’m not sure that matters as much as one would like to wishfully think, the government is perfectly capable of ignoring the opinions it does not like, and the publication of political opinion seems to be flightless if it is not accompanied by the possibility of organisation and assembly. Rather, I think a more important aspect of the Internet is that it shattered propaganda authorities’ control over the publication of facts. It is no longer possible to pretend that corruption is limited to individual cases of immorality, but a systemic issue. It is no longer possible to hide that development has become accompanied by hideous environmental pollution and food safety concerns, and as China’s middle class develops, middle class concerns become important as well. There is a great deal of cynicism about politics around in China at the moment, and the current media crackdown could, in my view, be seen as a somewhat ham-fisted response to this.
How has the strategy of the ‘Chinese Dream’ affected international relations?
To be honest, I still do not really understand what is special about the Chinese Dream, in comparison with earlier formulations of the utopian society that the CCP pursues, such as Communism or the Harmonious Society. Internally, it has somewhat shifted the focus from attention to basic provision of goods and services to a more aspirational society, but at the international level, it is difficult to see what contributions it makes to Chinese foreign policy. The leadership has taken pains to assure the outside world that China’s dream is not incompatible or conflicting with all other countries’ dream, but that it will provide opportunities for all of humankind. The problem with this sort of win-win discourse is that it doesn’t say very much about China’s strategic priorities or policy tools, neither does it inform us about the foreign challenges that China sees on its development path. So for the moment, we are left with our earlier assessment about Chinese international relations: that they are primarily oriented to support domestic reform and economic development, with relatively little attention to global matters, except where a few hot topics, such as Tibet, Taiwan and Chinese maritime claims are concerned.
How does Oxford contribute to this discussion and the wider study of contemporary China?
While I can’t speak for my colleagues, one of the major contributions I think that academia can and should make, is to unearth, arrange and explain primary information, in this case about China. We are in a position where we can explore reality as it comes to us, without an agenda or shareholders to please, this is quite a privilege, and it seems therefore that we are obligated to do the best we can to provide a neutral but informed voice in the China debate. Oxford has made the decision to invest heavily in China-related efforts, most notably in the new China Centre, which will be the largest of its kind in Europe. The OxOn China blog, which I edited, is a pilot project to find out how we can translate academic insights for a broader audience. So far, it has been relatively successful, with some of the pieces having been reprinted in rather prestigious places with a large readership. We are currently considering how to continue and expand this when the China Centre formally opens. But more can be done, I would be quite keen to explore ways to further engage with Chinese intellectuals, academics, policymakers, and so on. It seems to me that the dialogue must happen at many different levels, and that universities can play a key role in this.
What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
If you’re going through hell, keep going (Churchill)
What is your proudest achievement and most humbling moment?
My proudest achievement professionally would be the day I received my doctorate. It had been quite a slog and it is wonderful to see it come to a conclusion. In terms of humility: it is what academia is, or should be, all about. We should never be too satisfied with our own work, we must continue to try and find out why we are wrong, or our work is incomplete. The world is much too complex and textured to fit easily within our mental categories, and so in our trying to understand some of it, respect and humility, to me, are a necessary state of mind.
Interviewed in December 2013
As I am a research fellow, my daily experience is somewhat different from the typical Oxford academic, whose days will often be filled by teaching. Generally, in the morning before I have breakfast, I read my China-related news feeds and respond, when necessary, to e-mails from China that came in during the night, due to the time difference. When I’m in the office, most of my time is occupied by my research work: finding, translating and analysing sources, reading secondary literature and writing. One of the sweet sorrows of Oxford is that during term time, there is a continuous stream of events, seminars and conferences. Many of them are very interesting, and it is tempting to spend a lot of time on them, so some selection is necessary if I want to get my own work done. Partly, I’m to blame myself, as I like to organise small events to discuss interesting aspects of China’s media and policy landscape. I travel to China regularly, over the past few years primarily because of an EU project that my department supports, and which requires us to organise discussion seminars and training activities with Chinese partners. Somewhat less fun, but quite important, is the continuous grant-writing. I’d like to develop a research programme on Chinese legal theory and thought at the University, and I am currently thinking the different elements of such a programme through.
Tell us about your educational background and how you became interested in Sinology?
I grew up in a little village in Belgium, and was quite keen to go out and see the world. We had a rather good public library where I grew up, and I’d take out books on a number of different cultures. For some reason, China stuck because its art, literature and history intrigued me, and so when I went to university in Leuven, I enrolled in Sinology. Now, this was a rather classical course, and so when I went to study at Peking University in 2004, I started discovering contemporary China. I decided that I wanted to learn more about China in the world, and to when I went back to Belgium, I took a Master’s degree in International Relations. It turned out, however, that it wasn’t very easy to find a job with that profile, and so I spent some time teaching Chinese as a foreign language, amongst others in adult classes. One of my students there was a professor at Maastricht University, who decided to offer me a job in which I would coordinate Euro-Asian activities within the Faculty of Law, and could write a doctorate as well. No need to say I was very happy to take it, and so I spent the next three years researching media piracy in China and its relationship with international trade law.
What is New Sinology? How do you use this approach in your own research?
New Sinology is a term put forward by the Australian professor Geremie Barme, which briefly put means to engage with contemporary China in its full complexity, by paying profound attention both to its classical and modern culture, language and society, using a broad spectrum of methodological tools. I came into academic research from the angle of law, and one of the things I noticed in legal studies is that there is rather a lack of researchers who both have a solid foundation in the discipline, and a deep knowledge about China’s legal history and culture. The result is that quite often, academic research work about China does not, in fact, give us a lot of new information. It evaluates legal reform and proposes policy advise on the basis of superficial axioms about how Chinese society is deemed to work. More often than not, this toes a particular line about China which is either part of official discourse or of foreign politically motivated jargon, and neither is a good basis for academic work, if our objective is to pursue a rich and textured understanding. What I try to do, is to understand the historical development of communications law in its broadest sense: the question about how the State governs the production and dissemination of ideas. At the moment, I am working on the early history part of this timeline, as I’d like to understand how evolving print technology, literacy, thought and political structuring set the stage for both the rejection and continuation of particular political or legal elements as modernisation deepened from the late Empire onward. It’s quite interesting to see that the Party continues to use particular political concepts which were developed more than two thousand years ago, and so in order to understand how these concepts are used in China today, some notion of history is important.
What are the most important changes in China’s media landscape over the past decade, and what are the implications for its governance?
The biggest change is, without a doubt, the advent of the Internet. For the first time in history, individual Chinese citizens have a tool that allows them to communicate on a large scale, without a government license or prior permission. Hitherto, the most important leadership tactic to maintain hegemony in the ideological sphere was to fragment the media sphere, along geographical and sectoral lines, and create particular structures of privilege. These structures determined whether a particular message could be published depending on the identity of the author, the scope of the audience, the particular channel through which it was published, and so on. This inevitably meant that the media diet of the average Chinese citizen was rather limited. The Internet has changed much of this, even thought we do often get it wrong. Many observers say that the importance of social media lies in the fact that Chinese citizens can now publish their political opinions. I’m not sure that matters as much as one would like to wishfully think, the government is perfectly capable of ignoring the opinions it does not like, and the publication of political opinion seems to be flightless if it is not accompanied by the possibility of organisation and assembly. Rather, I think a more important aspect of the Internet is that it shattered propaganda authorities’ control over the publication of facts. It is no longer possible to pretend that corruption is limited to individual cases of immorality, but a systemic issue. It is no longer possible to hide that development has become accompanied by hideous environmental pollution and food safety concerns, and as China’s middle class develops, middle class concerns become important as well. There is a great deal of cynicism about politics around in China at the moment, and the current media crackdown could, in my view, be seen as a somewhat ham-fisted response to this.
How has the strategy of the ‘Chinese Dream’ affected international relations?
To be honest, I still do not really understand what is special about the Chinese Dream, in comparison with earlier formulations of the utopian society that the CCP pursues, such as Communism or the Harmonious Society. Internally, it has somewhat shifted the focus from attention to basic provision of goods and services to a more aspirational society, but at the international level, it is difficult to see what contributions it makes to Chinese foreign policy. The leadership has taken pains to assure the outside world that China’s dream is not incompatible or conflicting with all other countries’ dream, but that it will provide opportunities for all of humankind. The problem with this sort of win-win discourse is that it doesn’t say very much about China’s strategic priorities or policy tools, neither does it inform us about the foreign challenges that China sees on its development path. So for the moment, we are left with our earlier assessment about Chinese international relations: that they are primarily oriented to support domestic reform and economic development, with relatively little attention to global matters, except where a few hot topics, such as Tibet, Taiwan and Chinese maritime claims are concerned.
How does Oxford contribute to this discussion and the wider study of contemporary China?
While I can’t speak for my colleagues, one of the major contributions I think that academia can and should make, is to unearth, arrange and explain primary information, in this case about China. We are in a position where we can explore reality as it comes to us, without an agenda or shareholders to please, this is quite a privilege, and it seems therefore that we are obligated to do the best we can to provide a neutral but informed voice in the China debate. Oxford has made the decision to invest heavily in China-related efforts, most notably in the new China Centre, which will be the largest of its kind in Europe. The OxOn China blog, which I edited, is a pilot project to find out how we can translate academic insights for a broader audience. So far, it has been relatively successful, with some of the pieces having been reprinted in rather prestigious places with a large readership. We are currently considering how to continue and expand this when the China Centre formally opens. But more can be done, I would be quite keen to explore ways to further engage with Chinese intellectuals, academics, policymakers, and so on. It seems to me that the dialogue must happen at many different levels, and that universities can play a key role in this.
What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
If you’re going through hell, keep going (Churchill)
What is your proudest achievement and most humbling moment?
My proudest achievement professionally would be the day I received my doctorate. It had been quite a slog and it is wonderful to see it come to a conclusion. In terms of humility: it is what academia is, or should be, all about. We should never be too satisfied with our own work, we must continue to try and find out why we are wrong, or our work is incomplete. The world is much too complex and textured to fit easily within our mental categories, and so in our trying to understand some of it, respect and humility, to me, are a necessary state of mind.
Interviewed in December 2013