Dr. Shuxian Luo joins the Asian Studies Faculty

We are thrilled to welcome Dr. Shuxian Luo as the newest faculty member in UH Mānoa’s Asian Studies department. She’s currently working on a book project, tentatively titled Taking it to the Sea: Escalation Decisions and Strategies in China’s Maritime Disputes. Before seriously entering academia, Dr. Luo worked for four years as a journalist in LA, writing about topics from local elections to international relations. We got to sit down with Dr. Luo and learn a little more about her and her research interests (interview has been edited for length and clarity):

How does your experience as a journalist lend itself to your current research and projects?

One, it’s part of my pre-academic career, because when I was in high school it was always my dream to become a journalist instead of a professor. But, after spending four years working as a journalist, you have the chance to work on different topics from local elections to international relations, from the most local topics to those interstate topics. From this experience I can experiment, explore different topics, and I think get a clearer idea of what really interests me.

The experience is exciting because one of the most important similarities between working as a journalist and working as an IR scholar is you don’t repeat your work every day. You never know what’s going to happen, you never know what’s going to be in the news. So that’s the thing that really gets me excited about being a journalist or being a scholar. There’s always a way to keep you excited every day.

And, being a journalist means at some point you need to be very persistent, and to some extent stubborn, really chasing down people. That’s also how I approach my research when it comes to trying to pinpoint an interlocutor…You have this kind of courage and this kind of ethos to have a thick skin when chasing around people and always trying to find different ways to approach people.

What are some of the current events that are playing a large role as you write this book?

My book project is based on my dissertation which looks at what circumstances China tends to escalate or deescalate in contested maritime areas like the South China Sea, East China Sea, and Yellow Sea. What I found in my research is that in the East China Sea and South China Sea there’s no one size fits all solution to these disputes because the crisis dynamic and China’s cost-benefit calculations are very different…And of course more attention should be focused on sub-national actors, by which I mean local authorities and private citizens instead of the national governments, because none of the countries are monolithic actors in international relations.

And in South China sea the crisis dynamic is fundamentally different. Some people say China doesn’t care about its reputation or image…but I found that China still cares about its reputation for non-belligerency and still wants to be perceived as a powerful but respected country.

Another point I make in my work is that when we talk about reputationalities in international relations, traditionally people talk about reputation for resolve: “We want to show we are determined in defending our image, in defending our interests, we don’t want to be perceived in being weak.” But I would argue that when we talk about reputation, the first question we should ask is Reputation for what? Because—be that for a person or country—they are pursuing different types of reputations simultaneously, and these different types of reputations can pull the country’s decisions in different directions.

Nowadays we’re looking at the South China Sea, how things are unfolding. Like I said, you never know what’s going to happen in the South China Sea when I wake up tomorrow morning.

What other projects are you particularly excited about right now?

For this academic year I’m a non-resident China Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center, a think tank in Washington D.C. My project for this fellowship looks at China’s relations with Russia, and Russia’s role in the context of China’s territorial disputes with India and Vietnam.

What’s most exciting to you about being here at UH Mānoa?

The most exciting thing is where Hawai’i is. Hawai’i is the bridgehead to Asia, the steppingstone from North America to Asia and vice versa. I would frame it as a place where things, people, meet halfway…Or maybe a midway point. Hawai’i comes with all this possibility, and with a great geographical position. Also of course the culture here—I spent time on the West Coast, and the East Coast, and Hawai’i is definitely unique. It’s one of a kind. It’s a unique and amazing mixture of Asian, Pacific culture, and also American culture.

Speaking of reputations, what do you want your reputation or legacy here at UH Mānoa to be?

I want when people think about my work or my class, my teaching, it would be fun! I think there’s always a way to make study—even if it’s not easy—but to make it fun. And also for research I want to do fun research. I tell my students, if you are feeling so painful when writing this paper, believe me, there’s a big chance that your professor will read it with the same level of pain. But if I keep typing, keep typing, keep typing while writing a paper and have so much fun in writing this paper, I can basically have the confidence that my professor will read with a similar level of fun. I think it’s a good litmus test—if you have fun studying the subject, it’s more likely people reading your work will have fun!

It’s clear from the way Dr. Luo talks about her research that she’s having fun—“I can’t stop when I talk about my research!” she said. We are so delighted to have her join our faculty. This semester she’s teaching the undergraduate course ASAN 320Z, International Relations and Security in Asia, and the graduate course ASAN 688, China: International Relations.