ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts covered in the preceding chapters of this book. The book focuses on the mechanism of conceptualization. The rising importance of non-traditional security concerns gives renewed importance to China’s policies toward its northern frontier. The book examines the mechanism of appropriation and re-appropriation of Chinese products and symbols by four scholars who coped with very different life trajectories. It highlights the invention and reinvention of what it means to be Chinese in various Southeast Asian locales and time periods. Conceptualization, adaptation, brokerage and competition, diffusion and bargaining, appropriation and invention are mechanisms that play a role in non-linear, multi-sited, multidirectional, reinforcing, and reversible processes of Sinicization. Sinicization invites a distinctive style of analysis that in recent decades has become increasingly common in the social sciences.
