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In a world of growing international competition and rivalry between China and the United States, Latin America and the European Union (EU) are caught in the same thorny dilemma. Positioned between these global giants, both regions are facing a retorn to a Westphalian system of nation-states, which undermines their roles as emerging regional players. In view of these new global challenges in Latin America and the EU, this paper uses a qualitative and comparative approach to explore foreign policy discourses on autonomy in both regions. It examines their goals and priorities and assesses the potential regional and interregional consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Grounded in comparative law research, this paper compares differences in the regulation of online child pornography in China and the United States. The United States began regulating child pornography through criminal law in the 1970s, gradually refining the laws to distinguish between child pornography and obscenity and prohibit the possession of child pornography and virtual child pornography. In contrast, China treats child pornography on an equal footing with adult pornography, but imposes more lenient penalties on disseminating child pornography, which has led to the proliferation of child pornography. By comparing the two countries' policies and laws on child pornography, this review makes four recommendations for other countries: (i) define child pornography in criminal law; (ii) distinguish between obscenity and child pornography; (iii) prohibit virtual child pornography on the internet; and (iv) increase criminal penalties for child pornography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The US global leadership in science and technology has greatly benefitted from immigrants from other countries, most notably from China in the recent decades. However, feeling the pressure of potential federal investigations since the 2018 launch of the China Initiative, scientists of Chinese descent in the United States now face higher incentives to leave the United States and lower incentives to apply for federal grants. Analyzing data pertaining to institutional affiliations of more than 200 million scientific papers, we find a steady increase in the return migration of scientists of Chinese descent from the United States to China. We also conducted a survey of scientists of Chinese descent employed by US universities in tenured or tenure- track positions (n = 1,304), with results revealing general feelings of fear and anxiety that lead them to consider leaving the United States and/or stop applying for federal grants. If the situation is not corrected, American science will likely suffer the loss of scientific talent to China and other countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of COVID-19 has provided a new vigor to addressed global health issues. In this regard, global health diplomacy initiatives have seen a considerable surge. Countries around the world are using the opportunity to harness the potential of global health diplomacy in cultivating relations with several countries and also building a soft power projection. A case in point is how China has been spearheading global health efforts to improve relations while projecting a soft power about how China aims to act as global savior. Chinese efforts were able to gain significant traction owing to the fact that the United States under the administration of President Trump suspended its global leadership role, the first such instance in the post-World War-II era. This paper explains the concept of global health diplomacy by conducting a comparative analysis of the global health efforts and policies undertaken by both the United States and China by following qualitative research technique and secondary sources to explain the phenomenon. The study found that China led the response to COVID-19 not only domestically but globally as well. The U.S. lagged but gradually started to compete China in health diplomacy. There is an evident struggle for dominance in health sector between China and the U.S., however, it is not expected to lead into hard power struggle. The paper has concluded that it is important for both countries to work together in future in case of pandemic to spearhead an international effort against such crises. Moreover, it recommends Chinese authorities to include health corridor as a component with Belt and Road Initiative. On the other hand, the United States under the administration of President Joe Biden should invest in multilateral efforts so to empower global health institutions to better prepare for future health crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last three decades, a networked global system has emerged in the natural-science-based disciplines, sustained by collegial epistemic relations in universities. Nationally ordered and funded science has expanded alongside the global science system. The common global pool of papers, defined by bibliometric collections, nevertheless excludes large components of knowledge. In the global system, four tendencies are apparent: (1) rapid growth of papers, (2) diversification of scientific capacity to many more countries, (3) expansion of networked international and national collaboration as measured by co-authorship, (4) growing multi-polarity of capacity, outputs and quality, with the rise of China and several middle-sized national systems outside the Euro-American bloc. The paper critiques the interpretation of global science dominant in scientometrics, in which positivist data analyses are applied to performative national comparisons. It argues for a historical-synthetic explanation of the global system that combines data and theorisation, and accounts for relations of power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a comparative analysis of the divorce trends in the United States and China since 1980 and examines the consistency and disparity of alternative measures of divorce rate. While divorce rate is a special sociodemographic indicator, with different measures often yielding inconsistent or even contradictory results, this study contributes to the literature with a comparative analysis using data from the United States and China over 40 years. Results suggest that, as compared to the refined divorce rate (number of divorces per 1,000 married population) that counts only people with a possibility to divorce, the widely used crude divorce rate (number of divorces per 1,000 population) overestimated the increase in China's divorce rate from 1980 to 2019 by 60.76% and the decrease in U.S. divorce rate over the same period by 15.13%. Also, although in 1980 the U.S. divorce rates were much higher than the corresponding Chinese rates, divorce rates in these two nations, with very different socioeconomic systems and stages of economic development, are progressively getting closer in recent years. However, whether and when China's divorce rate may start to decrease, following an inverted U-shaped pattern over time observed in the United States and some other nations, remains a question for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ostensibly, Joe Biden's victory over Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential elections should have placed United States international policy back on a familiar path. However, despite the prevalence of a highly traditional vision of US foreign policy, the Biden administration has maintained significant continuities with the previous administration, as reflected in the policy towards China and the withdrawal from Afghanistan. In part, this is due to the constraints produced by the deep divisions that exist at domestic level. This paper aims to unravel the fundamental elements of Biden's foreign policy, focusing on possible ideological and doctrinal elements, strategic priorities, and any continuities and changes relative to his predecessor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, Teaching Expertise in Three Countries project is used as an example to show the significance and contribution of international comparative research and to think about the possible implications for policy in early childhood education. The project studied the development of expertise in preschool teaching in Japan, China, and the United States by employing 'video-cued multivocal ethnography' to explore how teaching expertise is defined in each of these countries and what processes help teachers acquire advanced teaching skills. This project has shown similarities and culturally specific notions, in what the participants have to say about characteristics of less and more experienced teachers. These research findings raise issues and challenges in early childhood education that resonate with the situation not only in the three countries but also possibly in other countries, such as problematizing the role of remembering and reflection in professional practice and the value of experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Union (EU) has developed a series of 'strategic partnerships' with a range of great power states. These partnerships reflect the emergence of an actor that seeks to establish foreign policy goals with an attendant institutional architecture and political commitment. This paper examines two of these partnerships with the United States and China to illustrate the manner in which the EU has constructed a collective identity for itself via discursive association with great power states, while claiming a normative character as an actor of a different kind, with the ability to act strategically with great power states via temporal and ethical forms of social distancing from these same actors. This paper consults recent survey research and policy developments to assess the success of these EU discursive strategies. It is concluded that these partnerships play a somewhat useful role in establishing the EU as an actor of global significance, whilst the EU is less successful in its inherent claims of normative superiority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on China’s latest national railway network planning proposal, the connectivity and accessibility indices of China’s high-speed railway network (CHSRN) in different time periods are computed to evaluate the implications of high-speed rail (HSR) for Chinese cities. An overall index for measuring the connectivity-accessibility of cities on the HSR network is proposed based on three indicators: (a) the Beta index, to reflect the connectivity of the HSR, (b) the number of reachable counties by HSR within the 500-km domain of a city, to reflect the location-based accessibility of the HSR, and (c) the population of the reachable places by HSR within the 500-km domain of a city, to reflect the potential-based accessibility of the HSR. Finally, the differences in the normalized connectivity-accessibility levels of different categories of cities are qualified to measure the impact of China’s future national HSR network on the potential development of cities. It is found that “Mid-to-Long-Term Railway Network Plan (Revised in 2016)”, if fully realized, would profoundly change the HSR connectivity/accessibility of different cities. Most notably, cities in the Yangtze River Delta would suffer the most whereas cities of the central and western regions would gain the most. This could potentially contribute to, or bring about new changes in, the socioeconomic landscapes in China. The methodological contribution of this paper is twofold. Firstly, an overall index to evaluate the comprehensive connectivity and accessibility levels of the HSR network is designed. Secondly, this paper investigates how to qualify the impact of the future HSR network on different tiers of cities in different time periods according to the change of the overall connectivity/accessibility index. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China and the United States are both major countries in the world in the production of and trade in wind energy products, and they are also important trading partners. Therefore, it is of great practical significance to analyze and evaluate the Sino-US bilateral wind power complementarity for re-examining their respective comparative advantages and re-understanding the benefits that trade liberalization brings to both countries, in an attempt to strengthen the trade relations between China and the United States and enhance trade complementarities in wind energy products under the global circumstances of fierce competition. In this paper, based on the trade data from the UN Comtrade database in 2007-2016, a quantitative analysis was conducted on the complementarity of Sino-US wind energy products, by adopting the quantitative research methods of trade combination degree index (TCD), export similarity index (SI) and trade complementarity index (TCI). The results shows that: i) the total trade volume of wind energy products between China and the United States has increased rapidly, and the trade surplus between China and the United States has been expanding year by year; ii) the overall trade balance of wind energy products trade between the two countries is generally stable, and the dependence of China's wind energy products on the United States is much higher than that of the U.S wind energy products on China; iii) the Sino-US wind energy products between China and the United States are highly competitive in the international market; iv) Sino-US wind energy products have different degrees of complementarity in bilateral trade. Finally, this paper proposed policy implications based on the findings of this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1984, the Fisheries Research Institute of Hubei Province first introduced channel catfish from the US to China. Since then, the production of China's channel catfish has undergone volatile changes. In 2003, as a substitute for Pangasius fillets from Vietnam, the export volume of channel catfish-processed products increased considerably. In recent years, the Chinese channel catfish industry has shifted from dependence on American and European markets to dominance in Chinese markets. It is expected that the continuing impact of the Covid-19 epidemic in China and the development of the global pandemic will significantly affect the channel catfish farming sector in China. This paper outlines China's channel catfish industry's development, markets, costs, and benefits and provides some suggestions for its development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper intends to shed light on the contentious theme of the reception of legal transplantation in the host environment, by examining the 2014 legislative reform of legal capital in China, which at least on paper imitates the enabling settings of US Revised Model Business Corporation Act (RMBCA). The paper looks at the interconnections between national-specific contextual elements, the resultant complexities, and the spillover effects of transplanted configurations in the unique Chinese socio-cultural setting, implicating the discrepancy between the ‘law in practice’ and the borrowed words ‘on the books’, and suggesting the importance of gaining a holistic understanding of ‘law’ involving the legal traditions in both the donor country and the recipient nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the evolving geopolitical developments in the Indo-Pacific region, especially through the lens of an India–US–China trilateral/tripolar framework. At a time when ‘strategic unease’ has become a defining characteristic of the region and ‘security alignments and strategic hedging’ a prevalent diplomatic tendency, this paper captures an evolving trend of convergence in the strategic visions of the three key Indo-Pacific players – India, China and the US, and rising bilateral strategic/defence cooperation between them. Using a constructivist approach, this paper explores the feasibility of a trilateral cooperative framework among the three countries in near future. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Objective: The objective of this study was to conduct a survey of the academic contribution and influence of Chinese scholars in the field of burns.Method: The PubMed database was searched to obtain literature items originating from various countries and Chinese provinces from 1985 to 2014. The citation data were collected through the Google Scholar engine.Results: A total of 1037 papers published in 256 journals were included in this survey. China was second only to the USA in the number of publications on burns since 2010. In addition, the annual number of papers has increased significantly since 2001. The journal Burns published the most number of articles, but its proportion has been decreasing. Of the papers included in the survey, 58.34% were published in journals with a 5-year impact factor between 1 and 2, whereas only 3.66% were published in journals with an impact factor >5. Both total citations and citations per paper have decreased in the past decade. Randomized controlled trials or systematic reviews merely accounted for a small proportion. Twenty-nine provinces including 64 cities contributed one paper at least. The publications from Taiwan, Beijing, Chongqing, Shanghai, and Guangdong were high in both quantity and quality.Conclusion: The Chinese academic contribution to the field of burns is now on a rise. Although the quality of papers is lagging behind quantity, scholars and academies are dedicated to improving China's academic level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the role and challenges of scientific self-governance and standardization in inter-continental clinical research partnerships in stem cell medicine. The paper shows that – due to a high level of regulatory diversity – the enactment of internationally recognized standards in multi-country stem cell trials is a complex and highly situation-specific achievement. Standardization is imposed on a background of regulatory, institutional and epistemic-cultural heterogeneity, and implemented exclusively in the context of select clinical projects. Based on ethnographic data from the first trans-continental clinical trial infrastructure in stem cell medicine between China and the USA, the article demonstrates that locally evolved and international forms of experimental clinical research practices often co-exist in the same medical institutions. Researchers switch back and forth between these schemas, depending on the purposes of their research, the partners they work with, the geographic scale of research projects, and the contrasting demands for regulatory review, that result from these differences. Drawing on Birch's analysis of the role of standardization in international forms of capital production in the biosciences, the article argues that the integration of local knowledge institutions into the global bioeconomy does not necessarily result in the shutting down of localized forms of value production. In emerging fields of medical research, that are regulated in highly divergent ways across geographical regions, the coexistence of distinct modes of clinical translation allows also for the production of multiple forms of economic value, at varying spatial scales. This is especially so in countries with lenient regulations. As this paper shows, the long-standing absence of a regulatory framework for clinical stem cell applications in China, permits the situation-specific adoption of internationally recognized standards in some contexts, while enabling the continuation of localized forms of value production in others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The foreign policy of a country is mostly determined by its geography. The geography compels sovereign states to cultivate relations with their neighboring countries to attain some predetermined interests. Similarly, China has created and maintained quite friendly relations with almost all Central Asian states to fulfill its ever-increasing energy needs and contain the escalating security threat being posed by the assorted terrorist, extremist, militant and separatist groups in the region. Since China is projected to overtake the US in terms of exporting energy resources by 2030, the communist state is striving hard to foster all sorts of ties with the energy-rich the Central Asian states. However, the growing Chinese closeness and affinity with the region have made the US apprehensive of the potential and ominous rise of China which could well dwarf and outclass the US in the regional. Therefore, it has led the US to craft strategies aimed at challenging and obstructing the increasing Chinese engagement with the region. Thus, it has instigated a kind of competition and low-intensity rivalry between the US and China in the region. Such a cut-throat completion would create marvelous opportunities and mounting issues for the regional countries. The article analysis China's economic and defence relations with all the Central Asian countries. It also discusses the escalating Chinese interests and the region's importance for China. In the end, the paper throws light on the impending competition and rivalry between China and the US in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There used to be talk about pleasure being silenced in public health and international development discourses on sexuality, and the damage this silence caused. The exclusion of pleasure continues in some domains, for example, mainstream sexuality education programmes in schools in China and the USA. However, despite considerable challenges to talking about sex and pleasure in institutional research and educational environments, there are a number of initiatives that are starting to do so. Furthermore, normative frames are being developed to justify and shape the new discourses on young people’s pleasure. This paper compares two interventions which create norms of pleasure in relation to young people’s sexuality: an international research project in Shanghai, which draws on conceptual framings developed in the USA; and a sexuality education workshop series developed by a non-governmental organisation in Shenyang, North East China, which adopts a frame of ‘self-identification’ from the Chinese LGBT movement. It identifies the opportunities and constraints created by the normative frames these interventions generate. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Prior to the development of ASEAN Plus Three, ASEAN was the main architecture integrating countries in Southeast Asia. The organization was able to develop a closer economic cooperation with China, Japan and South Korea. However, China and Japan competing and attempting to "dictate" each other and what regionalism should be and whom it benefits. Small states such as the members of ASEAN and those skeptical of China's motives in Southeast Asia including China's territorial claims to the South China Sea would cling to the US. Political and economic development over the past 10 years reveal that the close allies of the United States of America (USA) such as Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand, were unable to "limit" China's growing domination in the Southeast Asian region. The TPPA that was allegedly "hijacked" and led by the US since November 2009, was believed as a counter measure to check China's growing power in Southeast Asia. If the TPPA is not meant to limit China's presence in the region, the agreement would function as a pathfinder for the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific. This paper attempts to answer (i) what is the motive of the US government involvement in TPPA, (ii) what the posible implication of TPPA to China (iii) what would happen to China's role in the region, and (iv) what insurance actions developed by China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: There has been tremendous change on neuropathic pain research in the past 20 years in China and around the world. We analyzed the global trend of neuropathic pain research and compared China’s quantity and quality of neuropathic pain-related publications with other developed countries.Methods: Using terms “neuropathic pain”, we retrieved related publications from the Web of Science (WOS) database and PubMed database. From different aspects, such as the number of papers, total citations, average citations per item, H-index, research types, orientation, institutions, journals and funding, global neuropathic pain publications were classified and analyzed.Results: From 1998 to 2017, 21,733 articles regarding neuropathic pain research were published worldwide. Of these, 9.394% were contributed by authors from Chinese institutions, which followed USA and ranked second. However, the quality indicators of publications, including total citations, average citations per item and H-index, were relatively low in China. High contribution journals and the 10 most-cited articles on neuropathic pain in world and China were also listed, which also can reflect the quality of neuropathic pain. Based on National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), basic research was the main articles type, accounting for 32.91% of China’s neuropathic pain research.Conclusion: Global neuropathic pain research increased rapidly during the 1998 to 2017 period. The USA was still the leader of neuropathic research. Although China had made great achievements, there was a significant gap in the high-quality studies between China and other leading countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]