Far Oceans as Con/disjuncture: Constellations of Oceanic Feelings regarding China’s presence in World Oceans from 1980s onwards

In the post-Cold War era, the complex trans-oceanic decolonial legacy in East-Asian waters and the emerging geopolitical dynamics brought mid-20th century China to the forefront of the global oceanscape - as an "enemy" of the capitalist camp and as a trustworthy friend of the "Third World". The desire for continued growth in energy and international cooperation/competition can explain China's eventual signing of the UNCLOS in 1982 in the name of advocating the safeguarding of resources and sea sovereignty of Third World countries. Nevertheless, in this paper, I attempt to discuss how China’s oceanic events and structure of feelings do and do not fit together. It first brings my focus on China's practices and public discussions on "Opening up" in 1980s, where, as I argue, an oceanic conjuncture was forged through multiple temporalities, though often depicted as the linear "oceanic modernisation". To simultaneously bring together, dismantle, trace and narrate 'what’s going on' in different realms, I attempt to work through 'multiple temporalities' (John Clarke, 2010) and 'derangement of scale' (Timothy Clark, 2012) that expands Cultural Studies' imagination on multi-scale events. Bring this specifically to Chinese context, my close reading for several key texts (River Elegy (Xia Jun,1988), The Beach (Teng Wen-ji, 1984), Red Fleet (Zong Liang-yu, 1995)) focuses on their articulation of China's multi-scale engagements with the oceans. My emphasis is, on complicating the modernised oceanic narrative in China, we can tease out its everyday life and other multi-scale aspects for broadening the debates on Inter-Asian critical ocean studies.