Vol. 3 No. 3 (2025): September - December

Editorial Introduction Journal of Thai-Chinese Social Science (JTCSS) Vol. 3 No. 3 (2025): September – December

By Dr. Jiang Songyu, Editor-in-Chief

It is my great pleasure to introduce Vol. 3 No. 3 (2025): September–December of the Journal of Thai-Chinese Social Science (JTCSS). This issue brings together seven studies that speak to a shared intellectual concern: how Thai–Chinese social realities are being reshaped by mobility, digital platforms, cultural circulation, and institutional transformation. Across diverse topics—intercultural performance, livestream discourse, logistics modernization, e-commerce education reform, classical literary creation, digital heritage governance, and emotional-value marketing—our authors converge on a common task of social science today: to explain how meaning, trust, identity, and value are constructed amid rapid structural change.

A defining feature of this issue is its balanced attention to both “heritage” and “frontier.” On the one hand, we see deep engagement with long-standing cultural forms and intellectual history, as exemplified in the study of Jiang Kui’s artistic practice and cultural positioning. On the other hand, we also witness scholarship grappling with new communicative infrastructures—especially livestreaming and platform-based public discourse—where national image, affect, and cross-cultural interaction are negotiated in real time. This dual orientation is not accidental. It reflects the journal’s commitment to understanding Thai–Chinese social life as simultaneously rooted in historical continuity and propelled by contemporary innovation.

Intercultural performance as cultural diplomacy and identity negotiation

The opening contribution examines contemporary Thai–Chinese performance not merely as artistic expression, but as a communicative system embedded in sociocultural contexts. The paper articulates how performances function as “bridging narratives” connecting Thai–Chinese historical relations, shared aesthetic traditions, diasporic adaptation, and hybrid identity formation among younger generations, ultimately proposing a Thai–Chinese performance communication model with symbolic, affective, and relational layers. By situating performance within soft power and intercultural communication theory, the article offers an especially relevant Southeast Asian perspective on cultural diplomacy—one that is grounded in lived practices of co-creation and audience reception.

Digital influencer livestreams and the construction of China’s image

The second study turns to an emerging arena of digital public diplomacy: the comment discourse surrounding American influencer IShowSpeed’s livestream journey in China. Using critical discourse analysis supported by corpus-based tools, the paper identifies recurring thematic clusters (e.g., city impressions, cross-cultural communication, cultural symbols and high-technology) and argues that these collectively construct images of China as authentic, hospitable, modernizing, and historically deep yet technologically innovative. By moving beyond traditional news-based national image research, this work demonstrates how “unfiltered” livestream formats and participatory commenting can become alternative channels of intercultural sense-making.

Logistics modernization and regional industrial upgrading

From cultural flows, the issue shifts to the material infrastructures that enable everyday economic life. The study on aquatic product cold chain enterprises in Dongshan County analyzes the opportunities created by China’s national backbone cold chain base construction—while also diagnosing key constraints, including infrastructure gaps, technology deficiencies, operational costs, and uneven industry norms. The paper’s applied orientation is notable: it does not stop at identifying problems, but proposes practical strategies spanning infrastructure and technological innovation, operational management, brand competitiveness, and regulatory governance. This contribution aligns well with JTCSS’s interest in linking policy frameworks with regional development realities.

E-commerce curriculum reconstruction through value co-creation

Educational transformation remains central to Thai–Chinese collaboration and broader regional development. The paper on reconstructing the curriculum of e-commerce majors in applied universities addresses a widely discussed challenge: the “disconnection between skills and application,” especially where digital-intelligence teaching remains detached from real business scenarios. Guided by value co-creation theory, the authors propose a three-dimensional curriculum logic—demand co-creation, course co-creation, and evaluation co-creation—to strengthen industry–education integration and improve the alignment between talent cultivation and enterprise needs. This study is a timely response to the growing need for practice-oriented digital talent across Asia.

Jiang Kui and the “third path” between elite and popular cultures

Cultural history and intellectual agency receive careful treatment in the study on Jiang Kui, which frames its core question as how Jiang Kui opened a “third path” between refined elite culture and Jianghu (wandering literati) culture. Methodologically, the paper combines close reading, cultural reconstruction, and cross-genre analysis, incorporating hermeneutic and interpretive approaches to ensure historical contextual integrity. Its findings emphasize how Jiang Kui’s aesthetics, imagery chains, and musical principles cohere into a distinctive cultural positioning, offering a valuable reminder that cultural creativity often emerges from tensions rather than from stable consensus.

Digital heritage, global dialogue, and evaluation frameworks

The paper on China’s cultural heritage in the digital age provides a conceptual evaluation framework that distinguishes between “integration pathways” (technology–resource integration) and “practical dialogue” (depth of cross-cultural communication enabled by projects). While recognizing achievements in digitization scale and technological breadth, it identifies persistent challenges such as inconsistent technical standards, insufficient narrative depth, and weak sustainable governance, and calls for interoperability, interdisciplinary collaboration, and dialogue-oriented evaluation. This contribution is especially significant for readers interested in how cultural heritage can move from “technology demonstration” to meaningful civilizational dialogue.

Emotional value marketing and consumer behavior in cultural-creative industries

Finally, the study on POP Mart investigates how emotional value marketing drives purchasing behavior through immersive experience, drawing on flow theory, emotional value theory, and cognitive–affective system theory. Based on a survey of 600 consumers and regression/mediation analyses, it shows that emotional value (emotional resonance, social interaction, brand identification) enhances immersive experience, which in turn predicts purchasing behavior, with demographic moderators further shaping these links. Beyond the specific case, the work illustrates how cultural-creative brands increasingly compete through affective engagement and experiential design.

The Outstanding Paper of This Issue

After careful editorial consideration, I would like to recognize “Performance Communication in Contemporary Thai–Chinese Performance” as the Outstanding Paper of Vol. 3 No. 3 (2025).

This selection reflects three strengths. First, the paper speaks directly to the journal’s core mission—Thai–Chinese social science—by treating Thai–Chinese performance as a lived intercultural space where symbolic meaning, identity, and relational bonds are negotiated. Second, it integrates theory and practice in a way that is both conceptually clear and socially consequential, connecting performance studies with soft power and cultural diplomacy while offering policy-relevant recommendations for platforms of intercultural exchange. Third, the proposed model (symbolic–affective–relational layers) provides a reusable analytical tool that future researchers can apply to other Thai–Chinese cultural contexts, from festivals and tourism to creative industry collaborations.

In short, this paper exemplifies what we hope to promote at JTCSS: research that is theoretically grounded, methodologically explicit, and meaningfully connected to Thai–Chinese cultural and social realities.

To acknowledge the scholarship behind this contribution, we also briefly introduce the author team. The authors come from diverse academic and professional backgrounds spanning performance studies, intercultural communication, and Thai–Chinese area-focused social research. Their interdisciplinary collaboration allows the study to connect empirical observations of contemporary performance practice with broader theoretical debates on cultural diplomacy and cross-cultural meaning-making. As a result, the paper not only offers a well-structured analytical model, but also demonstrates strong contextual sensitivity to Thai–Chinese sociocultural realities and the evolving ecology of regional cultural exchange. Chinnapat Charoenrat (corresponding author) is affiliated with the Behavioral Science Research Institute, Srinakharinwirot University, Thailand. With a research orientation rooted in behavioral and social science inquiry, Dr. Charoenrat brings strong conceptual and analytical rigor to the study’s examination of Thai–Chinese performance as an intercultural communicative space.

A warm invitation to authors and readers

On behalf of the editorial team, I extend sincere thanks to all authors, reviewers, and readers who contribute to the growth of JTCSS. We warmly welcome new submissions that engage Thai–Chinese themes from interdisciplinary perspectives—especially work that combines solid theory, transparent methods, and clear contributions to knowledge and practice. Whether your research focuses on culture, education, communication, business, policy, or digital society, we encourage you to consider JTCSS as a scholarly home for rigorous, relevant, and forward-looking social science.

With best wishes,

Dr. Jiang Songyu
Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Thai-Chinese Social Science (JTCSS)
Vol. 3 No. 3 (2025): September–December