ABSTRACT
The chapter highlights the unexpected ways in which the effects of transnational advocacy have contributed to shaping China’s local social (and physical) landscape. As transnational activation took place in Yunnan, local actors - scientists, activists, and local governments - emerged as assertive players with entrepreneurial spirit and savviness, refuting the vertical presumptions of global-local relations. By taking advantage of their access to global discourses and conceptualizing them in ways that benefitted themselves, local actors often evaded the original intentions of not only their foreign collaborators, but even the Chinese central government.
The party-state under Xi Jinping’s leadership is now well aware of the existence of opportunistic and entrepreneurial local actors, whose behaviors threaten to undermine the state’s hierarchical power and is taking steps to weaken their linkages with foreign NGOs and reassert its power. The chapter suggests that we scholars, policy makers, and activists reconceptualize global-local relations to take more account of the agencies of local actors in transnational activation so that we can overcome the vertical presumptions of global-local relations and assess the real and potential impacts of foreign influence on the ground.
