Diasporic tycoons, outlaw states, and Beijing bastards: The contingent politics of Greater China

By questioning the relation between state sovereignty and popular sovereignty, it is possible to examine the ambiguities of the 'nation-state', especially the elusive hyphen that joins the two seeming stable nouns 'nation' and state'. Many IR scholars seek to nail down the hyphen to stabilize both the concept of nation-state in general, and specific nation-states in particular-the People's Republic of China (PRC), Taiwan, South Korea, and so on. Rather than use this scientific view of international politics, we need to shift images to appeal to a political aesthetic that highlights the ambiguity and negotiation of meaning. Instead of analyzing international law and diplomacy, it is helpful to look to the cultural epistemology of knowledge practices to see how they produce Greater China. The goal of this approach to East Asian IR thus is not precision, definition and prediction so much as to show how East and West, mainland China and Taiwan, nation and diaspora, power and knowledge, are all joined in contingent relationships.