The research paper entitled “Political and Economic Development in China and Russia During the Cold War,” focuses on the struggles made by the Chinese and Russian governments during the Cold War years for the improvement of economic situation of the two countries. By addressing such questions as the viability of the economic policies of Russia and China, the paper aims to bring to light the various methods used by the two governments to ensure improvement of the economic condition (...) of the state, as well as of its people. Effort has also been made to draw a critical analysis of the power struggles and confrontations within the two regimes and the influence of the same on the political and economic graph of the two states. The paper, therefore, discusses the political issues within the People’s Republic of China and Russia and the effects of these frictions on the overall political and economic condition of the country. Moreover, the paper is also an attempt to analyze the reasons why Chinese attempts at economic development were more fruitful than the efforts made by their Russian counterparts. (shrink)

This book examines the politics, philosophy, and history of Chinese power, focusing on social, strategic, and diplomatic trends that have shaped China for over three thousand years. By probing political and philosophical trends, it provides an alternative analysis for the rise of contemporary China.

This article summarizes the findings of this special issue focusing on five questions: (1) who studies Japanese politics and international relations in China, Japan and the Republic of Korea?; (2) what is being studied in each of these countries?; 3) how are Japanese politics studied in each of these countries?; (3) what determines the nature of the study of Japanese politics and international relations?; and 4) what is the impact of the study of Japanese politics (...) in each of these three countries? The findings on the first questions are that most scholars in each of these countries are concentrated in their forties and fifties, but their educational backgrounds are considerably varied. On the second question, the topics of study are becoming more wide-ranging in recent years, although in China, government policy still puts a constraint on the range of topics studied. Regarding the third question, the approaches that are used are becoming more varied, especially in Japan and South Korea. Concerning the fourth question, domestic politics in each of these countries matter, and financial constraints are a problem in China. Finally, it seems that Korean scholars in this area may have greater impact on the government than in the other two countries. (shrink)

Zhu, Cheng 朱承, Governing the Mind and Governing the World: The Political Dimension of W ang Yangming’s Philosophy 治心與治世——王陽明哲學的政治向度 Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s11712-010-9194-x Authors Yun Huang, College of Political Science and Law, Jiangxi Normal University, 99 Ziyang Ave, Nanchang, Jiangxi Province 330022, China Journal Dao Online ISSN 1569-7274 Print ISSN 1540-3009 Journal Volume Volume 9 Journal Issue Volume 9, Number 4.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:206 Feminist Studies 46, no. 1. © 2020 by Feminist Studies, Inc. Pang Laikwan Identity Politics and Democracy in Hong Kong’s Social Unrest Hong Kong’s anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill (anti-ELAB) movement began with legislation proposed in February 2019 to allow the transfer of fugitives to jurisdictions with which the city lacks formal extradition treaties. The law quickly attracted a tremendous amount of criticism and generated enormous anxiety because (...) mainland China was one of those jurisdictions.1 In fact, many believe that this bill was proposed to allow the government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to transfer wanted persons of any nationality from Hong Kong to China, subject to a legal process that many view as highly dubious. A large-scale anti-government movement exploded in June 2019 when pro-establishment legislators in Hong Kong insisted on passing it, and millions of people took to the streets. The government waited three months to withdraw the bill, only doing so after some of the most violent confrontations between civilians and the police in Hong Kong’s history. With Beijing’s 1. The law was originally proposed after a Hong Kong man, who killed his pregnant girlfriend in Taiwan, could not be extradited back to Taiwan to stand trial for the murder due to the lack of formal extradition laws. The proposed law, which would be applied to Hong Kong citizens, foreign residents, and even people passing through on business or as tourists, is being opposed due to the fear that it would be used to extradite Hong Kong political/civil rights activists and dissidents to China, where they would be harshly punished. Pang Laikwan 207 support, the Hong Kong government has doggedly resisted negotiating with the protestors over other demands, such as setting up an independent inquiry into police misconduct. As people have become completely disillusioned with the government and their own futures, tensions have increased. Collapsing many of the city’s socioeconomic problems into one cause, the anti-ELAB movement is primarily an anti-authoritarian impulse motivated by the unifying power of the term “Hongkongers.” As the movement unfolds, one of the most popular slogans, “Add Oil, Hongkongers!” (meaning “Keep going, Hongkongers!”) gradually transformed into “Rebel, Hongkongers!” and “Revenge, Hongkongers!” showing the protestors ’ anger about unrestrained police violence and the Beijing regime behind it. The militarization associated with these protests is both worrisome and symptomatic. This short essay analyzes this movement and uses it as a vehicle to disentangle social and political identity. My concern is about how a large-scale political movement can realign identities to generate power from the bottom. I use an Arendtian approach to ground my theoretical orientation, asking: How can political actions be understood as the pursuit of freedom to transcend one’s biological and social identity? From an intersectional feminist angle, if we are aware that social discrimination operates within a complex network of simultaneous discriminations, real social change can only be envisioned using a broad political canvas. Hong Kong’s anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill movement provides such a setting. Division and Inclusion “The people” might be the emptiest, but also the most powerful, phrase in the modern political lexicon. It can be used by politicians to justify groundless proposals or criticisms, but it is also the foundation and source of legitimacy for all modern political institutions. Indeed, the most basic meaning of democracy is “rule of the people,” which is impossible to avoid in any democratic imagination. As has been widely seen throughout the world, however, “the people” is often attached to various degrees of xenophobia—hatred of outsiders in the name of in-group solidarity. While the Hong Kong protestors’ courageous demands for the PRC to honor its promise to grant the city a high degree of autonomy have gained widespread international sympathy, thorny social divisions persist within the movement. 208 Pang Laikwan While Hong Kong has never been a united society, the anti-ELAB protests—like most social movements—have been highly divisive, splitting Hong Kong people apart. Most obviously, “the people” are divided by their political identifications, forming a primary antagonism between those who support the protests and those who do not, usually described... (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: 1. Molding the institutions of governance: theories of state formation and the contingency of sovereignty in fragile polities; 2. Imposing states: foreign rivalries, local collaboration, and state form in peripheral polities; 3. Feudalizing the Chinese polity, 1893-1922: assessing the adequacy of alternative takes on state-reorganization; 4. External influence and China's feudalization, 1893-1922: opportunity costs and patterns of foreign intervention; 5. The evolution of foreign involvement in China, 1923-52: rising opportunity costs and convergent approaches to (...) intervention; 6. How intervention remade the Chinese state, 1923-52: foreign sponsorship and the building of sovereign China; 7. Creating Indonesia, 1893-1952: major power rivalry and the making of sovereign statehood; 8. Siam stands apart, 1893-1952: external intervention and rise of a sovereign Thai state; 9. Domesticating international relations, externalizing comparative politics: foreign intervention and the state in world politics. (shrink)

Ulrich Beck asserts that global risks, such as climate change, generate a form of ‘compulsory cosmopolitanism’, which ‘glues’ various actors into collective action. Through an analysis of emerging ‘cosmopolitan risk communities’ in Chinese climate governance, this article points out a ‘blind spot’ in the theorization of cosmopolitan belonging and an associated inadequacy in explaining shifting power relations. The article addresses this problem by engaging with the intersectionality of the cosmopolitan space. It is argued that cosmopolitan belonging is a form of (...) performative identity. Its key characteristic lies in a ‘liberating prerogative’, which enables individuals to participate in the solution of common problems creatively. It is this liberating prerogative that forces the state from a position of political monopoly and marks the cosmopolitan moment. (shrink)

We focus on moral climates through case studies of three state owned enterprises (SOEs) in a South China City. In Company A, a shipbuilding company, the general manager persuaded the supervisory bureau to allow him to replace the old top management team with managers chosen on merit, and who supported his desire for reforms. He exercised transformational leadership, established internal rule of law, cultivated a spirited moral climate, and achieved turnaround. At Company B, a financial services conglomerate, the general (...) manager exploited strong political connections, enfeebled the governance structures, and with two subsidiary barons proceeded to milk company resources. That, and a large contingent of sleeping incumbents (idle protégés), bred a moral climate overrun by corruption, dereliction of duty and hubris. Bankruptcy was not averted. Hotel X, a subsidiary of company B, was a partial machine bureaucracy; its moral climate characterised by punishment avoidance and lack of spirit. A headquarters power bloc and the sleeping incumbents whom they protected prevented a law abiding, equity sensitive general manager from improving performance, and he lost heart. From these cases, we build a model of the relationship between moral leadership, institutional superstructure, internal governance and control systems, enterprise moral atmosphere, and performance. (shrink)

We are in an era of uncertainty over whose rules will govern global economic integration. With the growing market share of Chinese firms and the power of the Chinese state it is unclear if Western firms will continue to dominate transnational governance. Exploring these dynamics through a study of contract rules in the global cotton trade, this article conceptualizes commodity chain governance as a contested process of institution-building. To this end, the global commodity chain/global value chain framework must be revised (...) to better account for the broader institutional context of commodity chain governance, institutional variation across space, and strategic action in the construction of legitimate governance arrangements. I provide a more dynamic model of GCC governance that stresses how strategic action, existing institutions, and dominant discourses intersect as firms and states compete for institutional power within a commodity chain. This advances our understandings of how commodity chain governance emerges and changes over time. (shrink)

Introduction At the 4th Plenum of the Communist Party of China (CPC), held in September 2004, the CCP set out on a new self-declared path to establish itself as a permanent “governing party” (zhizheng dang) instead of remaining a “revolutionary” party.1 The 36-page resolution on the Enhancement of the Party's Governance Capability says that China's reform and development have reached a critical stage in which new situations and new problems are mushrooming.2 The CPC concedes that it needs to (...) enhance its governance capability to consolidate its ruling status and meet domestic and global challenges. A new…. (shrink)

We investigate how state involvement in the ownership of non-listed entrepreneurial firms affects pollution fees levied by national and provincial governments in China. While the national government sets minimum environmental standards, provincial governments can enact requirements that exceed these minimums, and they are largely responsible for enforcing even the national standards, so environmental levies can measure concessions that provinces make to encourage development and employment. Furthermore, state ownership is a good proxy for a firm’s political connections, which can influence (...) the relationship between the firm and the environmental authorities. We find that firms with state ownership pay lower environmental levies, which indicates that concessions are made for political or economic purposes. However, these concessions are conditional on the level of development of the province offering them, with better developed provinces providing fewer concessions. (shrink)

This paper addresses the current revival of Confucianism in China. It analyzes its political issues and outcomes, underlines the possible defects in Confucianism as a theory of politics, i.e., as a science and art of government and a public ethics. It looks back to the dialectical relationship between Confucius and Mencius and shows how the presence of Confucianist elements in 20th-century politics contributed to shape the public and political sphere in contemporary China. The strains between revolutionary (...) and reformist orientations through the last century are still at work in current social movements and reflected in political debates. (shrink)

This ambitious book examines the notion of legal transparency from a unique cultural and historical perspective. Drawing from their combined academic and practical experience with both Chinese and Western legal traditions, authors John Head and Xing Lijuan explore how an intense debate — pitting legal transparency against legal opaqueness — unfolded in dynastic Chinese law, which began in the dark mists of history and ended formally just over a hundred years ago. They rely on a wide range of both Western (...) and Chinese sources to explain how that great debate was resolved in the early Han Dynasty (around the third century BCE) in a way that molded Chinese law into a sophisticated legal system that for roughly two millennia balanced definitiveness with vagueness, predictability with flexibility, and egalitarianism with privilege — and that reflected cultural values still resonating in China today. Legal Transparency in Dynastic China presents a clear narrative that assumes no prior expertise in Chinese law or history, and it caters to readers interested in issues of good governance, comparative studies, China, history, and law. The book begins by defining “legal transparency” and explaining where it fits into the larger context of the transparency-in-government movement that has gained such momentum in recent years, especially at the urging of Western powers. Then the book explains the fundamentally different values espoused by early Confucianists, for whom society is best governed not through written law but through the exemplary behavior of a highly educated, virtuous, and enlightened elite. After tracing the political and ideological challenges that the Confucianists faced from the Legalists, Head and Xing examine the compromise that resulted in the so-called “Confucianization of the Law” around 200 BCE. They then show how that alloy of competing ideologies characterized Chinese dynastic law for many centuries, resulting in what some would consider the most enduring and effective legal system in human history. (shrink)

The governments of China, India, and the United Kingdom are unanimous in their belief that bioinformatics should supply the link between basic life sciences research and its translation into health benefits for the population and the economy. Yet at the same time, as ambitious states vying for position in the future global bioeconomy they differ considerably in the strategies adopted in pursuit of this goal. At the heart of these differences lies the interaction between epistemic change within the scientific (...) community itself and the apparatus of the state. Drawing on desk-based research and thirty-two interviews with scientists and policy makers in the three countries, this article analyzes the politics that shape this interaction. From this analysis emerges an understanding of the variable capacities of different kinds of states and political systems to work with science in harnessing the potential of new epistemic territories in global life sciences innovation. (shrink)

This study draws on a synergy of Corpus Linguistics and Critical Discourse Studies to scrutinize the portrayal of hackers in China Daily and The New York Times in the 21st century, primarily revolving around the main social actors and targets in hacking. This study demonstrates that both media share a positive transformation of the image-building of hackers in the 21st century. Besides, countries are salient social actors in hacker media discourse and the two media differ in their ways of (...) constructing them. The New York Times tends to have a negative other-representation and categorical otherness of specific countries through such discursive strategies as negative other-representation and group categorization, whereas China Daily is prone to insist on opposing the US hacking allegations in a defensive manner. Regarding major targets, China Daily highlights government websites whereas The New York Times emphasizes government websites, officials’ emails, large technology companies, and election infrastructure. The analysis shows that the two media’s different ways of framing hackers are underpinned by the ideologies behind them and the Chinese and US socio-political landscapes. This study can provide insights into how hacker discourse in media is represented in the 21st century and how national identities are constructed in the media representations of hackers. (shrink)

To explore the motivations underpinning corporate social responsibility (CSR) decisions in China, a country characterized by extensive government intervention, this paper investigates whether building a good relationship with the government is a political incentive that is driving firms to conduct CSR by examining the effects of political connections on the latter. Our results indicate that politically connected firms exhibit better CSR. However, the effect is considerably more significant for firms with existing political relationships. Additionally, findings show that the effect (...) is more prominent in firms for which political connections are more valuable, namely, non‐state‐owned enterprises, small firms, and firms operating in less market‐oriented cities, indicating that CSR can serve as a differentiation strategy to compete against other bidders. Dividing CSR activities into economic, environmental and social aspects, we find that the social‐based activities are more likely to be driven by political motivations. By categorizing CSR and political connections, this paper not only expands the scope of political CSR and renders the generated results that have been mixed together more distinguishable, but also provides a more precise understanding of the fundamental drivers of CSR in China from the perspective of resource exchange. (shrink)

In the context of the slowing growth of the real economy and the rapid development of the financial industry, more and more non-financial companies are participating in the financial industry for the purpose of development and profit expansion. China has gradually appeared the phenomenon of corporate financialization. This paper uses the panel fixed effect model empirically examines the effect of political turnover on corporate financialization by using data of listed companies and top prefecture level officials in China between (...) 2007 and 2020. We find that the turnover of mayors significantly decreases corporate financialization, while the turnover of party secretaries has no impact on corporate financialization. Moreover, these results are moderated by the characteristics of government officials and firm’s characteristics. Our results further show that changes by mayors increase fixed asset investment and decrease cash holdings, and, thus, reduce corporate financialization. These findings could assist in solving the “from real to virtual” problems, strengthening financial services, and realizing high-quality economic development. (shrink)

Trust in government and social cohesion are crucial guarantees for long-term social stability. With the development of the Internet, cross-border flows of information have become increasingly easier, enabling more factors to influence people’s political perceptions and loyalty. This study explores the mechanism of governments’ impression management behaviors on trust in government and social cohesion using the questionnaire survey with college students in Shanghai as the research subjects. Impression management strategies are classified into promotive ones and protective ones herein based on (...) the social psychology theory. The results indicate that both promotive and protective impression management strategies take by governments positively affect citizens’ loyalty, and loyalty positively affects citizens’ social cohesion and the level of trust in government; moreover, the level of trust in government positively affects social cohesion. These findings provide implications for boosting the sound development of China’s political society during the transition period. (shrink)

Despite worsening material realities of the climate, discursive tensions between a need to popularize climate issue and an increasing politicization trend in climate change communication continue to unfold. Politicizing climate change as an ideological conflict may mislead the public to perceive it as essentially a topic about politics rather than science and health. It also creates discursive and real political space for local governments and intergovernmental organizations to defray responsibilities and delay action. To closely examine the ways popularization and (...) politicization are localized, this article focuses how the same issue was discursively constructed as different newsworthy events vis-à-vis news voices of different power status in People’s Daily and Sydney Morning Herald, the most read newspaper in China and Australia respectively. Findings demonstrate that while People’s Daily tends to globalize China’s local climate efforts and polarizes the climate issue as international conflicts between developed and developing countries in general, and between China and the US in particular, Australia’s media tends to localize global climate efforts and represents it as domestic conflicts between the Coalition government and the rest of domestic society. Findings were explained by recourse to different societal functions of news media and changing power dynamics. (shrink)

This paper introduces the Generalized Argumentation Theory which takes argumentation as a locally rational socio-cultural interaction governed by social norms and carried out through discourse between the members of a socio-cultural community in order to reason things out. Then we bring in the basic structure of generalized argumentation and the localized procedure of Generalized Argumentation Theory for studying the argumentative rules. On the basis of above introduction, we use the localized procedure to analyze a case of political argumentation by reciting (...) poems in ancient China. By doing so, it’s indicated that political argumentation by reciting poems, in essence, takes cultural principle of Li of the Spring and Autumn Period as argumentative rules and uses poems to express ideas, in virtue of which arguments are accepted as locally rational by the politicians at that time. At last, the Little Red Book quotation fight, a similar political activity, is discussed briefly to show the significance that ancient Chinese political argumentation has on contemporary argumentation. (shrink)

On 19 October 2013, the Chinese government issued the Opinions on Further Regulation on Party and Political Leaders and Cadres Working Part-Time in Enterprises, also known as the 18th Decree, to regulate government officials’ employment with businesses. The 18th Decree is widely perceived as having had a significant impact on the use of independent directors with political backgrounds by firms, given the prevalence of this business practice. This paper examines the market reaction to the 18th Decree to ascertain the value (...) effect of political connections in China. We note a negative relationship between the political connections of independent directors and market reaction. We also note that the negative relationship between political connections and market reaction is moderated by ownership type and state of regional development. Specifically, we find that the negative relationship holds only for private firms in less developed regions. These results support our prediction that political connections add value to Chinese firms and that the value effect of political connection is contingent on institutional factors. (shrink)

In 2016 the Chinese government initiated a nationwide campaign aiming to eliminate poverty in China by 2020. Over 20% of listed firms in China have made significant contributions to the campaign. Using hand-collected data on listed firms’ contributions to the campaign and multivariate analyses, we examine whether managers’ and politicians’ personal incentives play an important role in firms’ contributions to the campaign. The results show that firms are more likely to contribute if they are state-owned and managers are (...) appointed by governments, if managers have a higher risk of being targeted in a concurrent anti-corruption campaign, if the political leaders in their province are new or intend to seek promotion, and if managers or directors have experienced poverty in their early life. The results suggest that it is important to consider managers’ and politicians’ personal incentives in CSR activities that could have a grand social impact. (shrink)

Drawing on a wide range of texts and using an interdisciplinary approach, this volume shows how Chinese and Japanese intellectuals mobilized the past to create a better future. It is especially significant today given a world where, amidst tensions within Asia and the rise of China, East Asian intellectuals and governments constantly find new political meanings in their traditions. The essays illuminate how throughout Chinese and Japanese history, thinkers constantly weaved together nationalism, internationalism and a politics of time. (...) This volume explores a broad range of subjects such as premodern and early modern attempts to conjure a politics of Confucianism, twentieth century Japanese Marxist interpretations of Buddhism and Japanese and Chinese endeavors to imagine a new world order. In sum, this book shows us why understanding East Asian pasts are essential to making sense of ideological trends in contemporary China and Japan. For example, without understanding Confucianism and how modern intellectuals in China grappled with this body of thought, we would be unable to make sense of the Chinese government's current promotion of the Chinese classics. This book will interest students and scholars of political science, history and Asian Studies, sociology and philosophy. (shrink)

Referring to James Legge's translation of the Liji 禮記, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy's justification for legalizing same-sex marriage was based on the statement, "Confucius taught that marriage lies at the foundation of government."1 Justice Kennedy universalized and applied Confucius' comment in a way that Confucius would never have imagined it would be. Yet, Justice Kennedy's universalization fits into a legacy of Western utilizations of the wisdom of the ancient Chinese sage. Although in recent history many Europeans and North Americans (...) regard universal values as a challenge to other societies to reform, it is important to remember that, in the eighteenth century, Europeans looked to China for universal... (shrink)

A revival of Confucianism in post-Mao China helped the government legitimate its power in the face of a new socio-political and economic situation. This paper specifically explores the role of Confucian self-cultivation in China’s governance. Drawing on Beetham’s theory of legitimation of power and Weber’s tri-typology of authority, we argue that self-cultivation, appealing to ingrained cultural values and traditions, fulfils the criteria of legitimation of power through two principles, namely, differentiation and community interest. In the context of suzhi (...) education and China’s national university entrance exam, we interrogate tensions and paradoxes between the need for a presentation of modern and liberal authority and the CCP’s one-party rule. The paper illustrates the complexity of China’s authoritarianism and the intricacies and intrinsic relevance of self-cultivation in current practice. (shrink)

Tax haven investment has become an increasingly important topic in business ethics. Given the considerable tax haven investments from emerging market firms, understanding how home-country institutions shape their investments in tax havens is theoretically intriguing and practically crucial. By integrating resource dependence and institutional theories, we hypothesize the existence of a negative relationship between firms’ home-country political status and tax haven investment. State-owned enterprises controlled by the central government dominate the political hierarchy. Compared with other types of enterprises, central SOEs (...) receive the strongest institutional support and are the most prone to institutional oversight, thereby exhibiting the weakest tendency to invest in tax havens. This top group is followed by SOEs controlled by local governments, politically connected private firms, and private firms without political connections. These groups exhibit an increasing tendency to invest in overseas tax havens. The empirical analysis of Chinese listed firms during 2003–2013 supports our hypotheses. This research contributes to the business ethics literature by identifying institutional drivers of overseas tax haven investment by emerging market firms, thereby adding to the ethical debate on international tax avoidance. (shrink)

This book examines the connection between central-local government relations and the transition of contemporary China, the urbanization process and social development. Based on empirical investigations and theoretical research, it argues that this is the key to understanding the transition of central-local government relations from the overall fiscal rationing system in the 1980s and the tax distribution system in the 1990s. The former system provided the incentive for local government to "set up a number of enterprises" and resulted in rapid (...) local industrialization, while the latter system enabled the local governments to move from "operating the enterprises" to "operating the land and cities". The book analyzes two aspects of the profound impact of the change in central-local government relations on the behavior of local governments: land quota acquisition and urbanization, thus providing valuable insights into the economic and social development of contemporary China. (shrink)

If there is any justice in the world, Bai Tongdong’s recent book China: The Political Philosophy of the Middle Kingdom will find a ready audience among students and nonspecialists interested in classical Chinese political thought and what it has to say about China now and good government in general. Although it is a fine introduction to early Chinese political philosophy, it is more than just that. Bai’s overarching theme is that China in the Spring and Autumn and (...) Warring States period (referred to as SAWS, roughly 771–221 b.c.e.) was facing a social and political situation very similar to that in modern Europe, and the Chinese philosophy of this period is best understood as a kind of modern philosophy. He argues .. (shrink)

This article investigates the relation between corporate governance and business ethics in the Asia-Pacific region. It draws on four examples of countries in the region (Australia, China, Singapore, and India), not because they are representative of certain regional characteristics, but as a means of reflecting on the diversity in this region. These countries display pronounced differences in terms of inter alia, historical development, cultural and social factors, legal system, corporate governance model, political system, and economic development. The complex interaction (...) of all these considerations provides the context for corporate governance and business ethics in each of the countries. The article highlights different orientations to stakeholder management and integrity behavior in the boardroom and executives’ offices. Although globalization and financial market hegemony suggests a convergent model is theoretically desirable, this research suggests that the human capacity to protect diversity and enshrine regional and local interests seems likely to inhibit rapid change. (shrink)

This paper investigates whether philanthropic giving decisions and amount of charitable giving are related to firms’ political connections and ownership type. To this end, Chinese firms listed on either the Shenzhen or Shanghai stock exchange between 2004 and 2011 are examined, where government interference in the business sector is prevalent, state ownership structure is dominant, and corporate political connections prevail. Our analyses show a significant and positive relationship between political connections and the likelihood and extent of firm contributions; a significant (...) and negative relationship between state ownership and extent of firm contributions; and a stronger relationship between political connections and corporate philanthropy in non-state-owned firms. These findings with regard to the relationship between corporate giving, political connections, and ownership type have important implications for understanding corporate giving behavior in China and in emerging markets in general. (shrink)

Mass media has a significant impact on public support for the government. This manuscript constructs a mixed model with official media use as the moderating variable and government trust as the intermediary variable to explore the mechanism of how unofficial media use affects system confidence, using data from a survey of the political and social attitudes of netizens. The study finds that official media use weakens the negative role of unofficial media use in building system confidence, with the intermediary variable (...) of government trust creating the necessary conditions for weakening the effect of unofficial media use. Moreover, the effect of unofficial media use on system confidence is heterogeneous. These findings remind us that it is necessary to deepen research into the micromechanisms that explain how unofficial media use reduces system confidence, a task for which cognitive theory is well suited. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIt was only in the early twentieth century that China discovered that it had a population, at least if a population is understood not as a simple number of people but instead in terms of such features as variable levels of health, birth and death rates, age, sex, dependency ratios, and so on—as an object with a distinct rationality and intrinsic dynamics that can be made the target of a specific kind of direct intervention. In 1900, such a developmentalist (...) conception of the population simply did not exist in China; by the 1930s, it pervaded the entire social and political field from top to bottom. Through a reading of a series of foundational texts in population and family reformism in China, this paper argues that this birth of the Chinese population occurred as a result of a general transformation of practices of governing, one that necessarily also involved a reconceptualization of the family and a new logic of overall social rationalization; in short, the isolation of a population–family–economy nexus as a central field of modern governing. This process is captured by elaborating and extending Foucault's studies of the historical emergence of apparatuses into a notion of fields of governability. Finally, this paper argues that the one‐child policy, launched in the late 1970s, should be understood not in isolation from the imposition of the “family‐responsibility system” in agriculture and market reforms in exactly that period, but as part—mutatis mutandis—of a return to a form of governing that was developed in the first half of the twentieth century. (shrink)

Through the examination of recent developments in Iraq, Brazil and China, this paper explores the role of public communication in a) generating, corralling, and buttressing political legitimacy, and b) negotiating, demarcating, and reproducing collective identities. The transformation of Iraq’s public sphere after the fall of the Ba’ath regime saw it shift from a tightly controlled and unified communication space to unencumbered yet fragmented spheres split along ethno-sectarian lines, buttressing sectarian politics and identities. The emergence of subaltern publics in (...) Brazil’s favelas empowered residents to express public dissent, assert their voice, and develop pride in their community. Chinese efforts to control online public discourse provide the government with ways of managing its perceived legitimacy and foster patriotic fellowship online. Legitimation and the affirmation of identity interact and support one another in public discourse, as we illustrate. (shrink)

Harmony has become a major challenge for modern governance in the twenty-first century because of the multi-religious, multi-racial and multi-ethnic character of our increasingly globalized societies. Governments all over the world are facing growing pressure to integrate the many diverse elements and subcultures which make up modern pluralistic societies. This book examines the idea of harmony, and its place in politics and governance, both in theory and practice, in Asia, the West and elsewhere. It explores and analyses the meanings, (...) mechanisms, dimensions and methodologies of harmony as a normative political ideal in both Western and Asian philosophical traditions. The book argues that in Western political thought - which sees politics as primarily concerned with resolving social conflicts and protecting individual rights - the concept of harmony has often been neglected. In contrast, since earliest times harmony or ‘he’ has been a profound theme in Confucian thought, and current leaders of many East Asian governments, and the Chinese government, have explicitly declared that the realisation of a harmonious society is their aim. The book also assesses how harmony is pursued, jeopardized or deformed in the real world of politics, based upon empirical analysis of a variety of different cultural, social and political contexts, including: China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Denmark, Latin America and the Scandinavian countries. It shows how harmony as an organizing concept can help to promote new thinking in governance, and overcome problems of modern-day governance like distrust, adversarial conflicts, hyper-individualism, coercive state intervention, and free-market alienation. It also discusses the potential problems posed by the pursuit of harmony, in particular in the grave threat of totalitarianism, and considers how these risks could best be mitigated. (shrink)

A script traditionally used exclusively among women, nüshu, was first identified in southern rural China in 1982. Its discovery opened a new window onto women’s lifeworlds and drew many scholars to explore its ethnographic and theoretical significance. Local authorities paid no attention to this “women’s script” until the 2000s. Scholarly investigation and governmental involvement over the past three decades have shaped nüshu’s cultural politics – specifically, how it is represented and practiced in contemporary society. Based on fieldwork conducted (...) since 1992, this article traces the trajectory of nüshu’s evolving function and social meanings. In the past it served as a communication platform and social forum where women could recount and release their perturbations, and this transformed their vulnerable being into a resilient and determined becoming. This power to transform, however, became a liability once nüshu was claimed as academic property and writing nüshu became a government-supervised profession. All this calls for a rethinking of where nüshu, an endangered expressive tradition, might be heading. (shrink)

Across the globe, the domain of the litigator and the judge has radically expanded, making it increasingly difficult for those who study comparative and international politics, public policy and regulation, or the evolution of new modes of governance to avoid encountering a great deal of law and courts. In On Law, Politics, and Judicialization, two of the world's leading political scientists present the best of their research, focusing on how to build and test a social science of law (...) and courts. The opening chapter features Shapiro's classic 'Political Jurisprudence,' and Stone Sweet's 'Judicialization and the Construction of Governance,' pieces that critically redefined research agendas on the politics of law and judging. Subsequent chapters take up diverse themes: the strategic contexts of litigation and judging; the discursive foundations of judicial power; the social logic of precedent and appeal; the networking of legal elites; the lawmaking dynamics of rights adjudication; the success and diffusion of constitutional review; the reciprocal impact of courts and legislatures; the globalization of private law; methods, hypothesis-testing, and prediction in comparative law; and the sources and consequences of the creeping 'judicialization of politics' around the world. Chosen empirical settings include the United States, the GATT-WTO, France and Germany, Imperial China and Islam, the European Union, and the transnational world of the Lex Mercatoria. Written for a broad, scholarly audience, the book is also recommended for use in graduate and advanced undergraduate courses in law and the social sciences. (shrink)

By comparing the political systems in different dynasties, this book illustrates the continuous evolution of traditional Chinese political systems, and evaluates the merits and demerits of the political systems in different dynasties. It also provides detailed records of the evolved government organizations, the names and functions of various offices, the titles and responsibilities of officials. The book consists of five chapters, each of which focuses on one of the five dynasties respectively -- Han, Tang, Song, Ming, and Qing, and a (...) concluding summary. Combining historical facts and anecdotes from history to make the discussion straightforward, interesting, and easy to understand, this is an ideal book for anyone interested in the history of China, particularly its traditional political systems. (shrink)

This article examines the impact of the prevailing state ownership in the Chinese stock market on corporate governance and the financial regulatory system, respectively, as the internal and external monitoring mechanisms to deter corporate fraud and protect investors. In line with the literature that state ownership exaggerates the agency problem, we find that the retained state ownership in privatised firms increases the incidence of regulatory enforcements against fraud. For the state-owned enterprises (SOEs), however, larger state ownership is associated with a (...) lower incidence of enforcement actions. This is attributed to the mutual political affiliation of the fraudulent SOEs and the regulatory commission. A new regulation "Solutions for Listed Firm Checks" promulgated in March 2001 has mitigated this effect by empowering the regulatory commission to increase the severity of regulatory conditions. Our evidence confirms the improvement in the regulatory environment and investor protection in the Chinese stock market brought about by the regulatory reform and development. (shrink)

International differences in how market exchanges are conducted (e.g., the mode of entry, level of ownership, and conflict resolution) have been attributed mainly to national culture and cultural distance. However, the cultural arguments cannot explain why economies/countries with similar cultural backgrounds (e.g., Hong Kong and China) exhibit differences in exchange arrangements. Thus, the cultural arguments provide little strategic guidance to multinational corporations (MNCs) in international marketing. We propose that in addition to culture, the governance environment in a country, namely, (...) the political, economic, and social institutions that facilitate or constrain the choice of governance mechanisms, influences the way organizations conduct market exchanges. This important factor heretofore has been ignored. Specifically, we introduce a typology of rule-based and relation-based governance environment to explain how the environment affects marketing channel behaviors, such as barriers to entry, channel exclusivity, information access, trust, and dispute resolution. We analyze the diamond industry in the rule-based governance environment in the U.S. and in the relation-based governance environment in China, and using the diamond industry in Hong Kong as a validation, to develop theoretical propositions and strategic implications for MNCs. (shrink)

American philosopher John Dewey spent more than two years in China (1919–1921). During and after his visit, he wrote some fairly perceptive and insightful commentaries on China. These were published in periodicals such as the New Republic, Asia, and the China Review, and sometimes in newspapers such as the Baltimore Sun. However, there is hardly any discussion of Chinese philosophy in Dewey’s published works or even his papers and correspondence. Among his rare mentions of Chinese philosophy was (...) an article published in 1922, “As the Chinese Think,” which discussed the teachings of Lao Zi and Confucius (M13 : 217–27).1 This was an attempt to improve Western (or at least American) understanding of Chinese attitudes .. (shrink)

We surveyed 2,221 rural residents in twenty towns across ten provinces in China. Structural equation models (SEM) found the quality of government, impartiality of institutions, and authoritarian values among citizens are the three main sources of citizensopen nomination and direct election (ONDE)traditional authority orientationinputoutputs’ less.

In this paper, we analyse the current China urban and rural income disparity. Our analysis demonstrates that the Economic and Policy reforms instituted by the Chinese government over the past decade or so have had two primary aims: Firstly, to maintain political stability at all costs and secondly to transform China into a modern industrial state. To ensure political stability, it has eschewed the current Russian model for a unique Chinese model where state owned enterprises co-exist with market (...) driven businesses. This all began in 1978, after two disastrous near revolutions where the hard-line Marxist-Socialists had to concede that all was not well for the future of China, in a modern world. Beginning with the rural sector, where the pool of greatest poverty existed and improving in that sector firstly, allowed the market-oriented to greatly improve their incomes, thus changing the disparities between urban and rural economics. The period of 1985 to 2005 was a period of almost exponential growth, and the raising of millions out of poverty was only part of the positive results, but the greatest social negative was that inequality became worse, as is found in most Capitalist societies. There seems to be an initial jump in the incomes of rural China to jump out of poverty, but the effects have slowed, and it is now up to government agencies to aid the remaining impoverished to escape the traps of poverty through education and relocation incentives for industry, domestic and foreign. This does not mean throwing money at the problem, it means preventing destitution, as destitution adds to crime and other anti-social events and greatly increases instability, the anti-thesis of current Chinese policy. Perhaps the question ought to be a rethink of agricultural policies, to generate corporate farming, as opposed to collective farming, all in order to reduce rural poverty and make rural businesses into a proper and profitable sector of employment. (shrink)

How to integrate artificial intelligence technologies in the functioning and structures of our society has become a concern of contemporary politics and public debates. In this paper, we investigate national AI strategies as a peculiar form of co-shaping this development, a hybrid of policy and discourse that offers imaginaries, allocates resources, and sets rules. Conceptually, the paper is informed by sociotechnical imaginaries, the sociology of expectations, myths, and the sublime. Empirically we analyze AI policy documents of four key players (...) in the field, namely China, the United States, France, and Germany. The results show that the narrative construction of AI strategies is strikingly similar: they all establish AI as an inevitable and massively disrupting technological development by building on rhetorical devices such as a grand legacy and international competition. Having established this inevitable, yet uncertain, AI future, national leaders proclaim leadership intervention and articulate opportunities and distinct national pathways. While this narrative construction is quite uniform, the respective AI imaginaries are remarkably different, reflecting the vast cultural, political, and economic differences of the countries under study. As governments endow these imaginary pathways with massive resources and investments, they contribute to coproducing the installment of these futures and, thus, yield a performative lock-in function. (shrink)

Concentrating on the Qingdao Observatory, this paper will explore the role of scientific facility in asserting China’s sovereignty during the first half of the twentieth century. Although scholars have explained the efforts of China’s internationalization in diplomacy through the perspectives of politics, economics and culture, they have not paid attention to science. Therefore, this paper aims to shed some light on how scientific issues were solved via diplomacy during the Republic of China, while further asserting that (...) the focus in negotiations was not confined to science itself, but rather to sovereignty within a scientific context. In this process, the meaning of sovereignty has also been expanded basing on the improvement of nation’s scientific capability. Besides, the participation of different actors involved in sovereignty assertion is investigated by this paper. Although the diplomatic negotiation was held at the international level, the local government and scientific community were main promoters in this case, which calls for attention on the various subjects in sovereignty issue. Consequently, this paper argues that Asian countries, such as Republic of China, could also employ science as a means to negotiate with foreign powers and claim their due rights. (shrink)

In Culture, Politics, and Governing, the study of contemporary ascetics provided me with a way to approach the practice of knowledge production and its intersection with cultural production that was able to take into account the institutionalization of authors and artists and the ways in which their practices were both governed and governing, often through valorization. Recently, I have worked to extend this framework to settings that are less obvious as sites for the production of governing knowledge: what Max (...) Weber and Foucault discussed as ascetics, generated through what Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno called the culture industry. The contemporary culture industry produces an art of living genre that encourages pecuniary subjects who treat the self as a site for the production of value from which to practice valorized ascetics. (shrink)

Among all forms of city planning, the grid plan appears, historically, to be the most measurable and recognizable system of civic geography. This paper will explore how and why different social groups have been able to define the symbolism of the grid to suit their own political purposes and how governments and patrons have utilized the grid as the spatial manifestation for their political ideologies. This paper will be based on case studies of cities operating under very dissimilar political systems, (...) i.e., the cities of ancient China and the city of Chicago in the Unites States. I argue that the American grid plan focuses on its peripheries, and that the expansive instinct of the American grid was effective in building a coherent American nation, transcending regional and class divisions. By contrast, the Chinese grid plan emphasizes the center, and the practices of urban planning in ancient China symbolized the evaluative tactics of the elite. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe pragmatist reform and opening-up in 1978 has revolutionised the way China communicates internally and engages with the outside world. Firmly embedded within this broader historical context, the interpreter-mediated and televised Premier-Meets-the-Press conferences are a high-profile institutional event in China. At this discursive event, the Chinese premier – ranked second in China’s political hierarchy – is put in the international media limelight, answering journalists’ questions on a range of topics. The section involving the interpreters’ rendering of journalists’ (...) questions is triadic and dynamic and represents a particularly interesting site of ideological contestation, which can be conceptualised profitably using Bakhtin’s concept dialogised heteroglossia. Drawing on a corpus containing 20 years’ press conference data between 1998 and 2017, this CDA study interrogates the interpreters’ agency, particularly in constructing the Chinese government’s image when rendering journalists’ questions. Despite the commonplace assumptions of interpreters being impartial with little agency, the government-affiliated interpreters are found to actively engage in facework and image construction. This leads to a discursive pattern described in Van Dijk’s ideological square, which involves further emphasising and foregrounding the positive elements yet de-emphasising and mitigating the negative elements about Beijing. (shrink)